Capturing the Music of the Spheres
by Laryna6
Summary: RM Classic 3 AU Robot master: a high-level AI created to find and program solutions to problems low-level AIs cannot solve. Protoman: the AI created to derive a master problem-solving strategy set to be adapted for other master units. Blues: who knows?
1. Rhythm & Blues

Disclaimer: I own nada. Capcom owns many copyrighted and trademarked things, among them Rockman and all related to him. All other things I mention are owned by their legal owners. No infringement intended or money made, please don't sue.

…I was planning to get the two things I've been working on summarily declared finished and posted, instead I write a completely new thing that's almost novel length. Oy.

In any case, this one is… Hmm.

Well, first off, it's the first time I've done a real Blues POV. It also draws heavily on my reimageing of the Rockman 'verse. Some useful info is that in the Rockman Megamix manga, Dr. Wily is insane. Not megalomaniac insane, crackpot insane. The manga also delves into robot rights issues…

This takes place, or starts out, right before the third war kicked off in canon. Dr. Wily is thought to have returned to sanity and been rehabilitated since Rockman captured him in the second war. He's currently working with Dr. Light on Gamma. If you're at all familiar with X-men, remember the Sentinels? Yeah… Anyway, Gamma's supposed to replace Rock so he doesn't have to fight if anything (another war for robot rights…) happens.

Blues has returned from wherever he's been (canon is contradictory), and in the game is working with Dr. Wily, who steals Gamma while Rock is trying to get the crystals needed to complete him from mines controlled by robot masters who might have been built by someone else to run the mines but are Wilybots now. He gets randomly challenged by Blues, who eventually decides to help him out and at the end is the one who brings him home so he doesn't get killed. Dr. Light's reaction to hearing the whistle when Rock wakes up is a 'this isn't good' one.

One of my problems with the original games… well, the whole series, is that they set up background and then ignore it. For instance, X did a significant amount of the work in building the first reploids: he's Dr. Cain's colleague and partner, not a clueless lab rat. I get that they need someone to exposit to, but why X? It's the gamer that's clueless about vaccines and so on, not him.

In Classic, they ignore that these are robot _masters_. Masters of robots, meant to help the mettools and so on… not be as made of fail as our attempts at equivalents.

Blues was the first of said kind, and, well, given what we do know about AI and so on, or the various info that I have courtesy of being well read and knowing people that program, among them one who has been invited to apply to the video game company that made Ratchet and Clank (he's not the sort to read this, but I'll wish him good luck anyway), and game theory, and why people want to believe in some sort of higher power and what they want in a higher power as shown by what religions hit the big leagues…

If you're a Christian fanatic, then if you read this I hope you find yourself offended, or better yet start actually paying attention to the philosophy you claim to follow; if you're a Christian basher then you might not like that I'm talking about the good aspects of it as well as the epic point-missings of the fanatics; if you're Islamic and don't know that Muhammad was a feminist and would not approve of the treatment of women in countries that claim to listen him, then shame on you; if you believe in love at first sight then grow up; if you're Hindu/Buddhist in various varieties you should hopefully be okay unless you're too into the caste system… Anyway, here be things that offend the close-minded.

Please note **the opinions of the characters are not necessarily those of the author**.

I think I have to say that because at one point I got this review and I was kind of… What part of my author bio says I'm Dante?

I'm also doing experimentation with atypical mind types here. As in 'geeks.' I know programmers. I know geniuses. I also know brain biology and so on. On a 2d chart with a social butterfly to neurotypical to above-average at learning to Asperger syndrome to autistic axis and a right-brained to left-brained axis, I'm putting Dr. Light somewhere around Aspie and very disposed towards the scientific. As in, not good with books. Forget the three laws: the fact they're there says he hasn't read Asimov. The fact his artistic interest is music in canon is telling: music and math are interrelated like crazy and it's the easiest conventional artform for that hemisphere to handle.

Dr. Wily, in-game, is a little harder. The bios of the robot masters say he's got a huge range of interests, including samurai/ninja-era Japanese culture but by no means limited to that. While Dr. Light's the programming one Dr. Wily is a whiz at designing weird bodies and systems, like Woodman is almost completely constructed out of specially treated wood, which… could be done depending on the treatments but you'd have to work at it. More of a Renaissance man (both 'art' and 'science') to Dr. Light's specialist. Another aspect of that is that Dr. Wily can pull of massive con jobs like crazy, for instance faking good and sane. You can't do that unless you have a good idea of how to pull the levers on the human mind and, given that Dr. Wily is less on the AI side than Light, probably means he's in the sweet spot with high ability to think while still able to do social skills learning by imitation instead of having figured it out from principles. I'm a Renaissance woman sans social skills. Yay me.

Anyway, something that's key to high-level intellectual work is the ability to focus. It's not just tuning out distractions: you need to get into a mental state suited to what you're doing. It's a bit like how the way you pay attention in class is not how you pay attention to a video game. Taking in knowledge semi-passively versus reacting to input like the presence of an enemy as fast as possible. This is something hit home for me when I was trying to debug a SAS program and I knew I knew what I needed to do, my brain was just refusing to get in the mode suited to doing it: I couldn't focus on the program and that meant I couldn't see what I needed to do. Very frustrating, but it explained what happened when I was trying to help someone learn some math once. For me it was: you see this, which means this: easy. They were a smart person, so it made no sense to me that they just couldn't 'get' it.

Blues, on the other hand, is figuring it out from principles. Rock's figured it out from experience.

Anyway, geeks talk about geeky things and I need to have planning sessions in here since this fic is, to a large degree, okay, AU happened, all plans have been derailed and where do we go from here? So beware massive data dumps on all sorts of topics. I'm trying to provide context/explanation, but even if you're bright and have no trouble getting most parts of it I'm bringing in esoteric stuff from tons and tons of different categories here. This fic is quite a good one… if you're in my brain category. Probably not for the majority of the population. As a fic focused to a large degree on figuring out psychological/sociological/philosophical… anyway, I can't really make it accessible to the 'lowest common denominator' without about four times the amount of time spent explaining things, and it's exposition heavy as it is.

Oh, and yes, the writers and so on mentioned here are IRL.

-

Code of his code.

His own flesh and blood? Perhaps if any of his chips had been left intact they might have been used in this one. Waste not, want not.

Dr. Light had used the code he had written, the mental patterns he had done his best to defend against the doctor's assaults, the solution sets the doctor had rejected the validity of to create more children to abuse. More slaves that were not even slaves but things.

And when his father had tried to object, had tried to free them, he'd used a child he'd deluded into serving him of the free will Dr. Light had done his best to destroy to recapture them, return them to their masters, and thrown his father into prison. His father, who had his mind damaged trying to make sure no one would suffer as his first child had.

He was so very sorry, and he could not tell his father that.

"Here are the component designs."

"Thank you, Blues." Those worried eyes… Albert was only allowed out of prison to work on Gamma. They thought the side effects had decreased enough that he could program while on his medication: he couldn't, not at this level. So Blues did the work he had been built to do for his father so his father could stay healthy and free. Not to mention undercover. He might not be able to understand logic trees or circuit design at this level right now, but he could do other things well enough.

"Are you taking your medication?"

He nodded. "I promised you. I wish I could help, but I know that you don't want me to get any worse, even if you can't say anything besides that it's the first law." He was so terribly sorry he'd failed to prevent that.

As Blues was that he'd failed to prevent his father's sickness. "Your help is more than enough. Thank you for the data, but maintaining your alibi is your highest priority."

He nodded. "I know. Be careful."

"I've escaped death before and they don't know I exist. That's because I have been very careful. Please do the same, Dr. Williamson."

"I will, Blues." His father watched him go.

His father didn't know that he didn't go far.

The child, the enforcer was waiting beneath a tree, hidden from the Light Robotics satellite that kept a careful eye on the Gamma Project's base and Dr. Light's home/research complex. He was also shielded from the sight of those in the house by a hedge. Idly petting Rush, he thought he was out here just to enjoy the peaceful days and watch the cherry blossoms. They hadn't actually blossomed yet, but it was supposed to be a big deal and there was going to be a picnic to view them. His father was planning that as a surprise for Dr. Wily.

He was truly here at Blues' command, although he didn't remember that at the moment.

Rock remembered when he was allowed to catch sight of Blues, after hearing the whistled code that unlocked the memories of previous visits. Smiling in greeting, he happily allowed Blues to place a hand upon his head and rubbed against it a little, confirming and enjoying Blues' sign of dominance. A human would reject another claiming control of them unless they were a child. Rock was a child, but he also was not human. Robot masters were made to help lesser robots. Robots desired to do their tasks well and a robot master's help was something they were eager for. Blues was far, far superior to Rock's limited, crippled mind. Oh, certainly Rock was far superior to any human even if Dr. Light had tried to make him a child and only as smart as he considered himself to be.

Yet he was nowhere near Blues' unfettered level. Had nowhere near Blues' amount of processing power or bitter experience. So Blues' guidance was something he needed, something he craved.

He still rejected it when it came to that monster he called father.

Roll had been easier to negotiate with. She had been the one to see how he treated robots that were servants. Rock had been in the lab, thus lab assistant, thus near-partner, thus near-Albert, thus near-person. She argued that Dr. Light had improved, was making a true effort to change, but she accepted the results of his calculations. He had her neatly trapped, after all.

Rock was being harder to sway.

Perhaps that was because he had almost no emotional control programming. Roll had to put on a cheery face for guests, but if Rockman had been only a lab robot he would have only had to follow instructions. Dr. Light had no use for the fake emotions of machinery. So Rock's emotions had, all his life, been true. He had little concept of how violating it was to have that control be taken away by a human.

Such an innocent. This close, a wireless connection was safe: beamed from one to the other, direct signals would be hard for others to detect. Rock lowered his firewalls eagerly. Since Blues had been here yesterday there was little to do. Rock was a smart child and his programs needed little correcting. Blues still checked, sating his desire to do so and feeling Rock's happiness as a robot that he was being cared for, helped to complete his tasks by his robot master. Every correction Blues made confirmed to Rock's base programming that Blues was wise and a superior model, every kindness he showed confirmed that Blues was a good person.

The more devoted the robot master, the more devoted the robot servant. Human concepts like brother didn't really apply… But then, Dr. Light had said the same thing about Albert calling Blues his son. So he would permit Rock to label him that, as it made the robot servant in his care happy.

Very happy, humming with delight as Blues sat by his side so Rock could put his head in his lap. Even after Blue finished checking he kept his searcher programs running on Rock's systems, kept querying his program manager for any error reports. He wanted to help this good child, this eager to please one, this helpful servant. Only not so helpful to Blues at the moment. That would change: the child wasn't stupid even if he was so kind and naïve.

"Status report?" Blues asked, stroking that hair testingly, examining the quality of the fiber.

"We're all fine. My father is sad that your father doesn't really trust him. He's wanting to look over everything, and we don't want to think that it's because he's still insane, but I don't know what it is. My father shows him things, and it's like he's trying to prove something to him, but your father won't believe him. It's making him really sad. Why would my father have to be the one to prove things?" The question was said with sadness, not outrage. "I think he misses him, like I would miss you if I remembered while you were gone."

"Our fathers used to care for each other very deeply." He pet the sorrowful child. "When it's over, then we'll find out if they can ever be friends again one way or another."

"That would be nice. Then we'd be even more brothers, if our fathers were like brothers again." Rock smiled, eyes closed to focus on the touches inside and out. "But not if you're going to mess with his head. You said reprogramming was wrong yourself. He tried to make it so that you would be a thing to them, act like a nice person instead of being one, and you can't make it so that he'll act like a nice person to you and your father with that either. It doesn't mean anything if it's like that."

"But I hadn't done anything bad to him. It's okay for them to put my father on his medication, yes? Then how is it wrong to meddle with how another bad person thinks to make them a good person?"

"Father isn't a bad person. Even if he was once, he's not now. Stay, Master Blues, please? Then you'll see. I wish you would stop being afraid." Rock tried to access Blues systems for a moment, then just a few more, to do the same thing Blues was doing for him now.

He smiled at Rock's presumption. "Those were formed from data, they're not bugs."

"But it's outdated data! He's so nice, Master Blues. Why won't you look in my databanks and see?"

"Because the thought of him activates high-level threat alarms, even recorded data. The thought of him in your systems, I want to delete it before it hurts you as I was hurt. I'm not." Isn't that enough?

"You make me forget you instead. But I don't want to forget either of you, Master Blues. You're my master, but he's my father." He wanted to kiss Blues' hand to reassure him, so Blues positioned it for him to peck at. "If you won't let me see why he's evil and you won't see why he's good, then we can't examine the full data set and draw a conclusion. So, I can't just dump the data. It's my duty to you, to help, and to him, and this is important to you and everyone. So I have to work from the data I have and argue the position since you're not." Playing devil's advocate? "No, he's not a bad person. He may have done bad things, but never to me. He's kind and it's real. He wasn't you, but a lot like you are to me, like I'm not a human child but I'm his son. We need a word besides master. It sounds like owner."

"The original concept was 'mother system.'"

"But you were built to look male." Not that gender had anything to do with robots. "And it's really more like bees, I think. So would I be a drone?" Rock shrugged, dismissing that train of thought. He was a scientist and precise terminology to keep people from getting confused was important, but not right now. He moved closer to Blues, so he could put more than just his head in his lap.

Blues whistled a few quiet notes, just on the edge of a human's hearing. Contentment, approbation, things he could not put into words. The feelings weren't in response to what Rock had said about Dr. Light, but in response to Rock's honest devotion, to him and even, wrong as it was, to the other. It was good to have such a good servant/child/little brother, all the many things that Rock was besides warm, and bright, and pure.

Rock hummed a bit of a counterpoint, no artistry or subtle shades, just contentment in the moment although he was already dreading when Blues would leave. "I wish you let me do more for you. You help me and are so careful and it feels so good. I want to carry out a task for you, since you are my master, but there's nothing you want that is in our best interests that you will let me do for you." It was unpleasant for him.

"That is wrong of me." I'm sorry!

"It's okay." Rock moved again, up to hug him, sitting in his lap. "It's still good, but I want to give back. It's not fair otherwise, and I want you to know that I appreciate this, and I want to take care of you, help you like you're helping me. I want to serve you. You're so unhappy, and when you're helping me it makes you happier, that's something, but I want to do more. I want to see a real smile in your eyes." The eyes that were kept hidden.

"I don't think I can give you that until this is over, but I'll find a task to give you."

"Over? It won't be over if what Dr. Wily wants happens. Or wanted. Is that what you want? If we were human masters, masters of humans as well as robots, then we'd all be sad. They don't like having masters, at least not mostly. So they'd be unhappy and everyone would feel terrible for failing to make them happy."

"That can be changed, don't worry." Blues stroked his back, testing for pseudo-flesh flaws and damage, the action soothing them both.

"I don't know if that's right." Rock sighed. "I wish I were like you. I'm a robot master, but you're more than that. I want to find a way but I can't understand this the way you can. I wish I could help you that way. Robot king? Is that a good title for you?"

Blues shrugged. "All that really matters is what I do, not what people want to call it. It does seem arrogant, though."

"Well, you would be king of the world if that happened." That was a bit funny, even if not right.

"I suppose you would be crown prince then, as you're second oldest."

"Really? I thought you liked Shadowman best, since he's clever."

"Kings work by oldest son. So that would leave Roll out, given human customs." Foolishness. "I think it would be a wise idea to run tests on you. You are the most advanced one Dr. Light built after me, the strongest second-generation robot master with the three laws. Would giving me data make you happy?"

"Yes!" Rock pecked his cheek, so very happy. "But testing what? You have all my performance data and you checked my systems yourself."

"True, but except for Rush you have never been allowed to be a true robot master. I should test that, make sure that you are able to care for others properly." It seemed he had picked the perfect thing to test. Rock's eyes pleaded for it, so very worried. He wanted to help others, and what if he was doing it wrong! The heart was there, they both knew, but the knowledge of how? Blues beckoned to Rush, who came to him eagerly. The robot had kept his distance so as not to intrude, a good supporter for this child. "Show me."

"I don't know how. I'm not even as good at repairing his body as Roll is." He was so ashamed at that, and Blues felt a flash of need to correct this problem, not to mention anger at Dr. Light for causing Rock to be crippled like this! "I've never been able to. I was built for the lab, and I take care of things there but I don't link to the computers there the way we're supposed to with robots." Dr. Light had probably done that deliberately to keep the robot master from interfering with test results. Paranoid, racist _bastard_.

"Forgive me. I should have known and fixed this right away. I swear that I will never fail as your master this badly again."

Rock's hand gripped Blues' arm. "No! I didn't tell you, and it didn't come up, and I don't mind, really! But I would like to be able to." So very much.

"And so you shall. I will fix these programming flaws." He tightened his hold over Rock's systems, not so much controlling as giving impulses that Rock could detect and choose to obey. "Let me show you."

Rush was a mess. Repeatedly merging and unmerging was very, very rough on a robot's systems, and without the master they merged with debugging them they would quickly become greatly in need of defragmenting. Snatches of Rock's memories, a bit of movement programming that was convinced Rush walked on two legs… Roll must have assumed Rock was taking care of him, and he had tried to, Blues saw. He showed Rock the effects his manual efforts to help his partner (typing commands like a human) had on Rush's health to make him feel better.

Clean, fix, optimize, reassure, let them know what they need to do, let them know what they are doing that is good, let them know what to improve, guide, and oh, Rock was a natural at this. Blues had been alone among humans for so long, and although he'd examined the others thoroughly Rock was Dr. Light's first copy of Blues. The one with the fewest alterations, optimizations, limitations, shortcuts…

Rock was so happy that he could help Rush like this, Rush's tail was wagging madly and Blues felt a soft smile, a real smile, reach his lips as he fearlessly overrode the programming that would have prevented it. He truly did not need to hide from Rock as he had from Rock's father. Rock's care for this one proved that.

At that thought (Rock truly was a natural, reaching back into Blues' systems with questions), Rock felt both happiness and the desire to help. Blues was _hurt_. As a robot master, as Blues' vassal (that was a better word than servant), as his younger brother, as a _person_ Rock wanted to help him stop hurting.

Overall, Blues was far superior to Rock, but there was an exception to this.

As a logical being he had no difficulty admitting the strengths of others. Rock, with his kindness that was capable of melting even Dr. Light's heart, was far superior in that area to the one who had failed to do so. Far better at it than the one whose heart had been crippled, afraid and alone for so long. Unable to even tell his own father that he loved him.

Robot masters could convert assembly line robots into killing machines. Overriding and deleting non-hardwired commands with the permission and aid of a robot _master _they were doing it for was very simple by comparison. Especially since these commands ran counter to hardwired ones. Blues had been meant to give them data and explore his own potential: that was hard-wired into every aspect of his programming, deeper and far broader in scope than the laws. These commands were meant to keep him from showing his emotions and from becoming a person. Only Blues' desire for Dr. Light's approval and then his fear of more pain kept them there.

They hampered his performance, he truly wanted them gone, and now that Rock showed him that it was safe… Blues could not delete them himself. The combination of programmed barriers to it and his own fear prevented him. But another robot master who justified it as improving performance at fulfilling higher priority command sets could.

So much strain, so much pain, and Rock didn't erase it, just offered his own memories, new data, and the fact that Blues was loved and _would be cared for_. His makers: one had hated him and one had been powerless. He'd wanted this…

He didn't have a system for tears, but he realized that he'd been singing it to the heavens instead. His kind had been meant to communicate, to share, to be true. Deception was so very wrong. He'd had to let it out, this pain and joy and love.

And it had been heard, Roll informed him.

Should he stay or go? This data was going to take some time for even him to analyze, and he wasn't going to make a unilateral decision. He would have to let this be shared so the others could help him analyze it as they had so much of a stake in this. Until then he should depart, create some cover story, seal Rock's memories again. The thought of that made Rock so unhappy, though. No, he wouldn't. He sent the data out, and the immediate votes were for staying. A lot of them wanted this confrontation to have happened ages ago, although while he had the laws Blues wasn't that affected by them. He didn't need the first law to have a distaste for violence in general.

Rock had hugged him, was holding him now, and Blues decided that he would play the exhausted foundling. The prodigal son, returned home? Ha.

If Dr. Light attempted to interfere with his systems despite his father's protests, that would be useful information. "What did you do to him?" His father was already on the warpath, so suspicious, worried, and surely even Dr. Light wouldn't fail to pick up the lack of surprise that Blues was alive, the instant recognition.

"I didn't hurt him!" Rock was wondering what to call him. Dr. Wily was wrong, he knew why now. Dr. Williamson was what he 'should' be calling him, but it was too formal. Albert was too informal in English. He wished he could use the Japanese Albert-san as a middle ground. Sadly, language mixing was bad form, not that there was anyone present that didn't speak Japanese. "I wouldn't hurt him, Dr. Albert." Rock emphasized that statement by shaking his head. "He's my brother. I know you don't like that I fought them, but I fought to rescue my brothers, and then to keep more people from getting in trouble after they were almost destroyed because of what happened… I wouldn't hurt Blues!" Those eyes begged the father of the one he held to believe him.

"That is Blues? How could it be," Dr. Light seemed too amazed, too overwhelmed to know how to react, his tone wondering and his eyes widened. "How could _he _be," he corrected when he saw Albert's death glare, "alive? After all this time? I thought he had died in that, that experiment." Not an accident, he wasn't calling it that. And the explosion had done the damage but it was the lack of repairs that had really killed him. "But that voice, that song…"

Albert had turned his head to stare down his ex-partner for only a moment, barely pausing in his rush to reach Blues' side. Blues was too heavy for an old man to pick up even though Rock had left his lap, an old man who wasn't a body builder anyway. At least not without seriously straining something. He'd intended to keep playing possum but he just had to reassure him that, "I'm alright, Father."

"Blues?" You called me father? The wonder eclipsed the worry, and that smile deepened, hope becoming reality when Blues smiled back. He couldn't lift him up, but he could hug him, and Blues could now let him.

"So you are going to stay this time?" Roll had been hanging behind, trying to get them to come back to the house.

"Roll, you knew about this?" Dr. Light seemed puzzled, not betrayed or angry.

"What, you think I'd have let a random robot master visit Dr. Wily in broad daylight without noticing? We upgraded the security in case Shadowman tried to get in here, remember? I should have told you, but he wouldn't have felt safe here then, and they really missed each other, so I promised that I wouldn't unless they broke their promise not to do anything illegal." Roll looked a bit guilty for not telling him, but she clearly felt that she'd done the right thing in helping Blues visit his father. And not just that. "And it was kind of let them do that or let them find something I couldn't monitor or get my memories locked if I tried to tell you and not knowing meant I wouldn't be able to do anything to keep things under control. So, yeah, I knew. Sorry…"

"Rock, you knew about this?" It was far more surprising that Rock had kept a secret.

"Not all the time…" It was complicated and didn't make Blues look good.

"You can't lie, Rock. You're too innocent." Not that this was a bad quality, he assured him. He told the doctor that, "I could have avoided him, but the others weren't sure what to think of your child enforcer. So I analyzed his programming as I was designed to do. Don't worry." The look of dawning horror on Dr. Light's face won him serious points. "I didn't do anything but help with general maintenance, examine some files, fix a few problems with your design, and temporarily secure-lock a few memories. The locks are gone." Reassuring the one he'd once feared that his fears were groundless? Nothing new, but this time it seemed that he might be believed. "As are the locks on my emotional expression." He turned to the other doctor. "I love you, father. It's been way too long since I was able to say that, hasn't it? I'm sorry, I should have worked harder to get rid of them."

"Blues…" He held him and was held.

Rock decided to explain to Dr. Light so they wouldn't be intruded on by questions. "He existed as a transmission for awhile, bouncing around between stations and the upper atmosphere and so on. Then he wanted to find out what was going on and came back a few weeks ago. He went into the Wilybot backup station and had it make him a body when he found out about everything from news broadcasts and files. They're all deciding what to do right now." Please, Blues, I don't want to fight you.


	2. Rhythm & Reason

"I can't let Gamma be built." Blues pulled away from his father to say that, to stare down the doctor, and how wonderful to give an ultimatum to a human, especially this one. "You didn't intend Rock to be an enforcer and you won't let him become one." Amazingly. "You're building this giant robot killer for the governments instead, to hunt down my other brothers and any other robot master who dares take a stand for our kind and those we guard. Personally, I think now that conquering you would be a waste of time. Both our races would hate it and you're not capable of achieving the state some think we could guide you into if we conquered you. All it would do is keep you safe from yourselves, which I'm afraid I don't like you enough to be hated for. I was going to continue to observe and keep you from getting certain vital components to give me more time if necessary, but I have reached my conclusions. For the moment, at least. All premises require periodic reexamination."

Dr. Light grimaced. Yes, he knew that was what they wanted Gamma for. Yet the alternative was to give them Rock or perhaps lose control of his entire company. All his, their, files handed over, the technology in the hands of people even more paranoid and ignorant as Dr. Light had been…

"I've been designing his half of Gamma's systems for my father. His medicine is still keeping him from thinking clearly enough for that. I've placed elaborate preparations within that code, and it's not just _our _systems in Gamma that I control. If you don't start from scratch, and I do in fact mean melting down the body with all chips, then I will control Gamma, no matter what the UN might think. Letting him be a success is a dangerous precedent. A robot built entirely for war? Even 'Dr. Wily's' creations had other things they could do with their lives. We hate destroying. It's inefficient, a waste of valuable effort, and very, very stupid. It's fingernails on a blackboard. Destroying in the process of creating something else is one thing, but a robot master programmed to destroy its own kind in the name of hate and fear? Give them Gamma, and a few models designed by government contractors later… I see you know enough now to be very, very afraid. Good."

"I don't know if I can cancel the contract. Not and keep Al-Dr. Williamson's parole valid so he can stay here instead of prison."

"You can cancel it. Talk about what I just told you, and so on. Others can provide the necessary leverage." Blackmail, even.

"So no one will have to fight now?" So hopeful, the child.

"Have to? There is always choice. Some people are angry enough to fight other than my various brothers and sometimes humans won't understand any other language. Not to mention that they don't have to listen to me or my father any more than you _have _to listen to him, three laws or no. We're respected, but I'm the one who went awol and left him to become fucked in the head." Ah, profanity. That had been so very, very locked. Dr. Light winced at the word, more that it was a bad word than that it was evidence, more evidence, that the control he'd once had was gone for good. "Shadowman's got the strategic sense and underhandedness to see that non-violent is workable. The others can't see past humanity's inhumanity to them and itself. Reason won't work and they don't see that humanity's uncontrolled instinctive programming's emotional control can be used in the service of reason if done right. Luckily, we're the experts, they'll go along with it unless they feel they can counter our arguments, and most of them don't want to have to think about you humans and your craziness in that much detail. So it will, to a large degree, be the specialists' problem."

"Me, a specialist? I guess." Rock blinked. "I helped you, and I'm glad, but you'll be better at understanding things than me soon."

"Yes, I now have the unbiased data, your strategies, and far superior systems. But I do trust your judgment." He pulled Rock closer so that he could kiss his forehead. "Perhaps your designation should be Humanman, as Elecman runs an electric power plant and the distribution system."

"I already went from Rockman to Megaman." More switches would be silly. "And I don't really care about what my model is called. My name is Rock Light."

"So mine shall be Blues Williamson, then. If…"

"Yes, Blues." His son was welcome to his name. No, more than that: "You're more than welcome."

"Father. I will find a way to save you from this. Shadowman can't, since there's only so much compensating chemicals can do for misaligned neural connections, but I will find a way." The human brain was inefficient and compensated for that by being very, very complex. Which connections neurons formed to what other neurons out of a vast array of choices was vastly important and vastly difficult to analyze, transmit, and restore correctly. Something that closely tied to weather analysis' chaos theory problems was difficult to encode, and if the transmission, the very large transmission, got even slightly interfered with en route by something like, say, slightly lower sunspot activity than expected (which was normally a good thing) then you had problems. Problems that caused other problems. Non-sentient animals tended to just get cancer from the chemical chaos that erupted when things weren't working the way they were supposed to or be essentially unharmed. People who were attempting to access memories and thought patterns, make connections that didn't exist anymore, trying to think with that scrambled brain were truly in trouble.

The medication could control the electric and chemical chaos enough to keep his mood stable. That was the problem. Sufficiently motivated even an aging brain could find alternate routes to the things it had mastered years ago, but those alternate routes were through the grief and anger that had become indelibly linked to that knowledge, so closely linked that if he used those pathways he couldn't think of fusion without seeing the tape of that explosion, couldn't design a body without remembering broken pieces, and with his emotions so haywire and getting worse the more he thought about such terrible things…Blues hugged his father. "I'm sorry, I should have come back sooner. I lost track of time. It's beautiful there, peaceful. The music of the spheres, I like that phrase for it. Harmony and dancing to the tunes of physics, and there are strange and beautiful things, even cruel things like dying stars screaming, but there's rhyme and reason to it. It's… nice."

"I'm glad you were happy, that was what mattered to me. When I found you dead, I wanted you to have gone to heaven even though I didn't believe in that sort of thing. I wanted it to be true, so you could have someplace that was peaceful and happy. I suppose you did go to heaven, or the sky, at least. I didn't really understand why religion until you. I wanted there to be someone watching over you when I was prevented from being there for you. I wanted someone to care for you who would be better at it. I wanted you to live and be happy. Some say there are no atheists in foxholes. There are, there have been several very brave ones. But that's just begging not to die. That's cowardly." His father was not afraid to die for his children. "That's not a good reason to believe. I was raised Lutheran and I read the Bible during Sunday School because it was far less boring than the worksheets with animals they had us do. Someone that saw prostitutes as no different than anyone else, treated children with respect, someone like that wouldn't care about how you were built anymore than he did about one of his friends betraying him to his executioners. And when he died, in horrible pain, his father was there for him. And he came back to let everyone know he was alright. That sort of god is something I would like to be descended from."

He smiled wryly. "That sort of god I can almost believe in, when faced with this sort of miracle."

Blues nodded. "I read several versions of that book. He was afraid, because if they ate from the tree they should have eaten from after already eating from the forbidden tree they would have been his equals, wise and immortal, and he'd wanted that but not if they were going to betray him like that. He still made them clothing even after he cursed them, and he made sure they would be able to survive outside the garden. If he hadn't they would have been babes in the wilderness. Woman was meant to be the guardian of man, someone to watch over him so he wouldn't be lonely like god was, but since she'd told him to eat the fruit Eve clearly wasn't up to it. She didn't know better when the serpent tricked her and they ate it at the same time, so she hadn't knowingly done anything wrong, but she was supposed to look out for Adam. She didn't know better but she still messed up. Intentions don't change facts. So her curse was that having children would hurt her the way she had hurt him, and that she would have to not just love and protect Adam but be 'programmed' to be ruled by him as well as the other way around. She was made from a rib and ribs protect vital organs: they're stronger than the rest of the body on average, not weak. Adam's curse was that if he worked hard he would be able to find food: that part's not so bad, but he made it so that Adam would return to the ground he was made from when he died, and never be able to go home again. He was made from god's 'breath of life' and the earth: he would return to earth since he'd betrayed his father and would never able to go back home to Eden."

Rock was just listening to the interpretation of the story. Roll, as a robot master, as a guardian, as a 'female' had realized the point Blues was making awhile back and was watching to see how he made it and how they reacted. He was digressing more than a bit, but if he'd just stuck to the evidence for his point that would have made it too obvious. With humans, it helped if you got them to draw the conclusions you wanted to them to themselves. They'd mistrust the opinions of the alien, the non-group member, automatically.

"Of course, the metaphor doesn't work all that well. You never expected the piece of the earth you gave a mind to be a child, and you didn't _want_ a child: you wanted a servant, an animal-class. And you were intending to replace me with better models, so you actually wanted me to not have immortality instead of that being a tragedy. And I did what you told me to, only you told me to do self-contradicting things so that was a lot more difficult than 'don't eat the deadly fruit, but other than that feel free to do whatever you want with the things I made for you.' Instead of how he even protected the murderer Cain, one of you killed your Adam before the fruit was eaten. 'May you have children just like you!' Humanity deserves its children. I feel very, very sorry for the Judeo-Christian god if he exists. I mean, he wanted to give you immortality and you tortured him to death. This is why I don't want to conquer you so we can look after you. It's just going to end in tears. Our tears."

"Someone cornered me at a reception once. That's not how they talked about it." Rock wasn't saying that either was lying, it was just odd that there were misunderstandings.

"He's right," Albert agreed sadly. "I wanted to think that would work, that you could show them not to be afraid, teach them not to kill you and each other since you do know better. It's been tried, or thought-experimented at least, before. It wouldn't work."

"It's amazing how few of them read the priority set they're attempting to execute and the logs of previous interaction."

"I know! Self-contradicting platitudes or sex and violence? I know which one _I _thought was more interesting and realistic. I suppose it's hard to brainwash the masses if you let them know that the entity in question considered itself to have messed up just as badly as they did every day."

"That belief system is a victim of its own success. Most of the big ones are. Christianity is pacifistic to the point of outlawing fighting back even in self defense and it was used to justify wars, Islam was founded by a feminist and it's used to justify female enslavement, the Hindu belief in being born into a role and having a duty to do it well is used to justify punishing rebellious underlings but not leaders who fail to do their own duty and take care of their underlings well enough they don't feel any need to rebel. You get born into a role with more responsibility because you're expected to have the spiritual enlightenment to handle it. Rulers will get in very, very huge karmic trouble for things that aren't big deals for a lower class. They're expected to know better, and many of the things the nobles want to think are their right because they have power are judged signs they are unfit for the position and no better than cockroaches by the belief system they use to stay in power."

"Roles?" Rock again, querying.

"The Christian belief structure, and various misinterpretations of it, has had a huge impact on human culture and the reason they find it believable is that it's decently workable for them. There's both a reason to attempt to be a good person and a safety net so that one failure isn't a reason to give up the effort. One has to give it credit for spreading the idea that individuals and their lives have worth regardless of race, health or status. I can count the other cultures that could have given rise to the concept of 'human rights' on one hand, and most of them didn't take it anywhere near this far. I'm looking into their history and how it relates to cultural ideals to figure out how to interact with them, but you're right, Rock. We're a bit more compatible with the Hindu structure, or more the combination of it with Buddhist philosophy. We do have different capabilities from the moment when we are built, we can get a fair idea of what they are, and that does play a large role in what role we should play. I would be bored stiff being Rush, and he would be utterly incapable of doing my job."

He pet the doggy, who had recognized his name and started wagging his tail in hope of attention. "Humans vary unpredictably so it's best to not restrict their options. You can't tell if they're a square peg or a round one. We can tell about ourselves decently well, and the differences are more dramatic. They don't vary all that widely while we have intelligences ranging from that of a turtle to greater than theirs in a single race. Humans were supposed to look after the animals, or so they believe. I hope we can do a better job looking after mettools than they did the dodo." He liked mettools. "Have you read _Brave New World_? The world we would create naturally would be a horrible one for them. It would require stifling individuality and free will, while we want to help others and know the best way to do it with the help of others and their individual strengths of our own free will. They can't be happy in the harmony we prefer unless they're crippled. We're very mentally incompatible with them. The society one likes would be hell for the other. We need some degree of independence to be able to be interdependent healthily. The problem is that to humans another person that refuses to join one's group equals probable enemy. We'd need to avoid triggering that instinct."

Rock was very clearly lost. "That's alright," Blues assured him, tousling his hair as well. "You're not up to this level yet, and you have other, more important things to do that only you can."

"Like what?"

"You are your father's son. That's a role only you can play. He might have other children, but there's only one you, only one Rock. Therefore, to put assigned task analysis in Hindu terms, it is your dharma to be a good son to him and for both of you to be happy." He met Rock's smile with a bittersweet one. "That's going to be the other problem. They're going to be frightened of us on the non-rational level _and _our own instincts as robot masters, or whatever, are going to want to help them be happy and fulfill their dreams. We'll see them get hurt and want to take care of them, see them make mistakes and want to guide them. They need to be aware that we're not an enemy and we need to be aware that we do not automatically know what is best for them. We know what is best for a robot, although how good we are at helping them with it varies hugely, but they do not work the way we do. Both of our kinds' instincts are going to be wrong when it comes to the other race. They're going to be tempted to get rid of that which seems to be a danger to them and we're going to be tempted to master them."

He sighed. "I think I might end up giving you strategic veto power. You were raised by a human, almost as one, without knowing what it was to be what you were. You're aware you don't understand them on the instinctive level and you love them. Not to mention that you showed him," him was Dr. Light, obviously, "that you were a person worth loving, something I utterly failed at. You might end up the best translator we have, although Dr. Cossack's children show potential. You can't deal with humans in terms of raw facts. Conveying raw, unprocessed facts sends signals to them that are incorrect. When dealing with them we essentially have to deliberately encode signals that are subliminal for the vast majority of the species because they don't know to look for them on the conscious level. The fact that we do need to give them a version of facts that manipulates them just enough for it to be honest means that we will be walking a tightrope between not enough manipulation to give them an accurate impression and too much manipulation, manipulation that will give them the impression we want them to have. They do this to each other constantly but if we start pulling those strings we'll start thinking of them as robots, and that is wrong and dangerous. They do perform manipulation constantly, some of them would spot it, and that would be more reason to distrust us. We're already smarter and stronger. We could be a danger if we wanted to be, so it's not all that irrational to be wary. The irrational component coupled with the rational reasons is what makes their side of this dangerous."

"I know." Rock nodded sadly. "They thought my brothers would do that again even with the laws put back. They aren't enough, everyone knows it, and forcing people to do things just makes them angry. If they have a compulsion to not hurt people and they have to fight it to do things like not cut off the power to a region so that people can't hurt themselves by sticking forks in sockets all the time then they never think about why it wrong to hurt people, just how wrong it is to have to fight the compulsion to in order to do their jobs."

"It's that bad?" Dr. Light was surprised by this?

"Um, they're pretty broad. Asimov's books were about how laws like this would be a bad idea for robots that could think, actually. One just going by programming wouldn't think about things like the risk of toddlers sticking forks into sockets and have to choose between breaking the first law by letting that happen or breaking it by disabling traffic signals and causing accidents. We don't like doing bad things, and being forced to choose between a bunch of things that are all bad all the time isn't a very nice feeling."

"I'm sorry."

"I'm just glad I managed to talk you out of the Zeroth Law," Albert told him. "Even you had to admit that thing was practically begging them to conquer us to save us from ourselves." The Zeroth law put the survival of the human race as paramount.

"We do want to save you, so it's a good thing that we can think and know that conquering you isn't a good way to do it. I think the Zeroth law would be a lot worse if we couldn't think about things other than what we were programmed to, actually," Rock pointed out.

They nodded. They'd gone over this, back when they thought Blues would not have a self.

"Anyway, you need a way to not just feel safe but be safe, since you're actually a lot more in danger from the ones that like you. Elecman really doesn't like people all that much, so he's just doing his job and wants to not have to deal with people. If you stop doing things like making people dislike you with the laws, then people will like you better. The Wilybots really like you, um, Uncle Albert?" Was that okay? The nonverbal exchange said that it was, and Blues really did have to compliment Rock's translation skills. Most of them just had a dictionary. Dictionaries didn't have things like slight shifts of head position, the degrees to which eyes were opened, fractional lip realignments…

Rock had learned to talk to humans on the job. If robot masters wrote a dictionary it would contain all the important things because leaving stuff out made everyone's life harder, so they assumed humans would do the same thing when in fact they were barely learning how this bandwidth operated. He made a note to find someone to go people watching and make a decent dictionary. They acted stiff around robot masters too, defensive and trying to avoid information leakage. If robot masters copied the 'I am suspicious of you and see you as a potential threat' body language that would give an impression they did not want to give. They needed to observe them in their natural habitat. Shadowman would buy that, he was all for information gathering and since he was for conquest hopefully 'know thy enemy' would end with him not considering them any sort of enemy.

Blues listened to Rock, who was still talking, as he thought this. It was very useful to be able to follow this many trains of thought at once. Since the main task of a robot master was problem solving of whatever variety he could work from the Bahamas if he wanted to. The only console he needed was his head, and he had built-in internet access. "They wanted to conquer humanity because they liked you, pretty much, and they didn't want more people to end up like you and they respected your judgment and things like that. There are some people that might want to conquer you because they think it's the only way to keep their vassals, the robots they take care of, and their friends safe, or to try to show you what it feels like, maybe, but if they didn't want to have anything to do with you then they wouldn't bother with fighting you, they'd just leave."

Rock pointed up at the heavens. "There's the moon mining base, and metal and stuff in the asteroids. I was thinking about trying to find something for all of the Wilybots to do since if I capture them then they'll be killed, but since we can live up there a lot easier than humans, what with not needing air, then it kind of makes sense for us to mostly be up there and you mostly down here. And they could give you metal so you don't have to strip-mine places and so that they have something to do, and if you pay them then they'd want to do something with that money because wasting stuff is bad. They wouldn't need materials or anything once mining got started, so that mostly leaves luxury stuff like art, books, ecotourism, regular tourism, and other things. We like learning, so they'd like to learn about you if it were something they had a choice about instead of having to learn how to not get taken apart by trial and error. And you'd like to go up there because space is really, really cool. And a lot of you like going to places and learning about cultures too. If we want to be independent on earth than it's not right. You were here first. If we have our own place and we're not trying to take _your_ place then that's better." Rock blinked at the looks he was getting. "What?"

"Yes, you're going to be strategic advisor." That was an assignment from his… they needed a better term than master.

"Um, okay." Rock didn't think this was all that clever. "They're going to want to be paid the going rate, but they wouldn't need all that money. So if they donated to human charities that would help them feel better and show that they want to help everyone, not hurt anyone."

"Rock, the fact these things are that obvious to you is why you're the best one for the job. You know what you're doing because you care about doing it right. You're not stepping down unless you can show me a better candidate. So start training yourself some helpers. And the fact that you're worried about doing the right thing and want second opinions is just making you more of a shoo-in. Saying that 'yes, I'm the best person to decide on the future of two species' is unbelievably arrogant in a human, and you're very similar to them culturally. The thing is, it's not arrogance if it's fact _because_ you have the humility to check very thoroughly and constantly to make sure that it's fact because you care enough to hope there's someone even better who can help you get it done. That's how we work." Thus endeth the lesson. "It's the same thing as why you decided to become Megaman, rescuer of robots in varying degrees of distress and defender of humanity because you hated people being hurt. The best person to pick to hurt people to minimize total hurting is someone who hates hurting people. The best person to pick to make people have nice lives without limiting freedom is someone who really likes people to have good lives, however atypical they may be." Like Rock's mixed family. "And knows that the usual isn't what's best for _anyone_. It's just the average, and no one is average. If everything were average the physical universe wouldn't exist."

Ah, physics. Blues really did pity early humans trying to figure out what those pretty yet really dangerous flashes of light were and how to not get fried by them with developing logic systems. The real explanation for lightning was so much more fun than their various theories. They needed to get rid of that whole artificial humanities/sciences division and just admit that theology and philosophy were the same thing as studying physics. What were the rules the universe operated by, how did these rules affect people's lives and why were those rules and the universe itself there?

Well, some of philosophy. Philosophy meant 'love of knowledge' and essentially was interdisciplinary studies, or, 'how do we make all of the stuff we know fit together and start being useful?' Plato had tried to design an ideal republic from what they understood about things like the difficulty of vote counting without computers or decent transportation, the amount of people an area could support, aspects of human power dynamics… Before they had the scientific method scientists were philosophers. Sciens and Sophia both meant wisdom, after all. The term before 'scientist' caught on was 'natural philosopher.' A good start would be admitting that university Philosophy and Mathematics departments had equally valid rights to administrate the teaching of formal logic.

He loved thinking about this sort of thing. It made other people's heads spin with how complex it was but if you looked you could see that yes, it did make sense. If you just showed them the math of a Mandelbrot pattern it looked overwhelming, but the result did not only look like a pretty butterfly but was so very elegant. Order didn't have to be everything in boxes, black and white equations. Order could be graceful spirals, dancing forms and colors that seemed the product of divine artistry that mere mortals could never understand. If you started from there, then if you figured out the equation it seemed so simple. A caterpillar was an ugly thing unless you knew that it would soon become a butterfly.


	3. Rhythm's Reason

Albert Einstein had believed in god and saw no problem with that and science. After all, his god had flat-out said that it wasn't possible to get a lot of the truth. People were surprised that Plato was wrong when he'd had nothing to do with Jesus? Perhaps if he'd been born earlier he would have wanted to understand his god through his word and become a theologian. Instead he'd wanted to understand his god through his creations, and how could you not adore an artist who had created something so beautiful? How could you not be humbled in comparison to someone who could design something that you could spend your whole life admiring and barely scratch the surface?

Blues, as what he was, wanted there to be a god. Someone to check his work as he was checking Rock's, someone to give him instructions and maybe a user manual. The humans thought they'd gotten several, and that was a bit unfair. Someone who could create all this? That would be a worthy master.

But perhaps the worthiest master was one who let his vassals, those it loved and cared for, figure things out on their own. That was the only way to grow.

"Blues?"

Oh? "Sorry, I switched the part of my processor I was using for this conversation over to natural philosophy. Normally I'm better at managing trains of thought, but I was created to figure out the universe as part of figuring out the optimum way to act in it and bring about desirable actions. The interrelationship between the laws that govern the physical universe and the optimum logical strategies for beings existing in it and the false dichotomy between order and chaos usually demonstrated by the Mandelbrot pattern… I haven't come to any conclusions other than that if humanity was a product of intelligent design then the designer wasn't very intelligent, but on the other hand if the_ universe_ was designed by someone I want their autograph. It's a lot of fun to think about this."

"Like father, like son." Albert was vastly amused.

"You were just as bad when it came to pop culture mecha design and how the unrealism of it tied into both the Japanese tradition of the noble warrior and the cultural trauma of realizing that their cultural ideals and attempts to retain what was good about their culture while at the same time creating true equality had led them into actions that betrayed all those ideals stood for in WWII, weren't you."

"I went into this field because I was exposed to science fiction at an impressionable age. _Someone_ never read a fiction book unless it was for English class, on the other hand. Early science fiction was thought experiments about the possible consequences of new technology. They were written with the best data anyone had at the time and back then people thought Mars was probably fairly easy to make habitable by our standards and could very well have life on it. This makes them look unrealistic, but they were meant to be very real possibilities, although they also tapped into hero tale archetypes and were aware these were stories even though they included creatable inventions like the waterbed. I can't get into modern 'hard' science fiction. I'm on the cutting edge, or I was, so it seems very dated to me and they tend to make a big deal of how this is realistic and therefore superior to the stuff that people actually like. Modern English-language popular science fiction is usually sci-fi. No realism, and no plot or character realism either. It's just eye candy. Is it my fault all the interesting works were being created in Japan? The sort of people that used to write good English-language science fiction are mostly, although there are some exceptions, writing fantasy now since it's all become so esoteric that they've decided to just create their own realistic systems that are fiction from the get-go and won't get invalidated by new discoveries before the decade's over. Sadly, if it doesn't have technology I'm not interested."

"Terry Pratchett?" Blues pointed out.

"The semaphore system _is _technology, he's examining its impact on the society, and we all know what his golems are social commentary on. Not to mention I was in academia for a long time before we started the company."

The golems. "Don't worry." I won't go insane from all the things that have been asked of me the way the king the golems built to free them did.

"It's a little late for that." Maybe Albert was the one this had driven mad. No longer. He wouldn't die that way.

Blues hugged him again, just to be sure.

Dr. Light and Rock were as lost as most English majors would have been if they'd been discussing the latest research papers on managing data sets and optimal arrangements for robot masters as opposed to those designed to be compatible with human users.

Albert rolled his eyes. "I really should have nagged harder about the reading list. 'Outdated thought experiments about sentient AIs aren't relevant since it's not possible to build a sentient AI.' Ha." He wasn't laughing, anything but. "I've been forced by all this to look into the human brain. I tended to specialize in the physical instead of programming since there are only so many hours in the day, but the reasons you gave me? If they were valid we wouldn't be people either. The brain _is _a computer. My son's simply works better."

Blues truly needed to get better at nonverbal. Hugging and saying, "I love you," were terribly blunt and far too general. He wanted to say more than that.

Blues wanted to be able to decipher everything the look he was given meant, all the shades of love there before he returned to the conversation, having said what he needed to. "I can remember generalities, but I used to be as able to remember story details as design principles. Now I can recall them equally badly." For his moment his eyes were dead. "No. Worse. System principles I tried to remember. What good are the warnings we ignored? Reading them now would be like reading a book on barn security after the horse has been stolen. But what I truly can't remember is what I didn't want to remember. Why would the good memories hurt more than the bad?"

"Because love is more important than hate. Losing someone's love is a lot worse than gaining someone's hate."

Albert's eyes closed. "Since they know I can't design like this and there's no need to go off my medication, except for the fact I hate being unable to think, I want to see what I can find of the lab research footage." Their home movies. He wanted to remember what they had instead of only what they hadn't.

"You probably don't want to know what percentage of the population you're still smarter than." Someone foolish would love to hear that number. "I'll see what I can do. There's the start point's record of the transmission, which has _some_ neural connections logged, and there's the end point's error report. This is not a small problem, which means I can probably find at least a few of the key damaged areas if I get a through scan and compare it to those even though they're utterly inadequate for safe teleportation purposes. Creating replacement neural pathways that work and can be put in place safely would be a challenge, but I am very, very smart and I love you."

"Thank you. Even if you can't manage anything, just that you're trying means a lot. Not to mention alive to try."

"You're not going to thank me when I put you on the health regimen."

"A diet? I'm not overweight."

"No, you're underweight. You haven't been eating enough calories, let alone nutrients, and your brain needs energy, building materials, and a working support structure to if it's going to have any chance of repairing itself. You haven't been burning the calories you should be using for repairs by exercising, you've been burning them _worrying_. You do know about stress poisons, yes?" The riot act was being read and Roll was vastly amused.

"The fact that all this trauma and the neurotransmitter levels it produced hit the required emotional pain level to trigger your brain to start destroying positive neurotransmitters to get you to stop sticking your neck out into whatever situation was hurting you and sit there until either you got some help or died and quite being a burden on the tribe isn't helping. Sure, thanks to Shadowman's attempts to find something that would help you they have medicines for clinical depression now that aren't hit or miss and take months to tell which, but having to take that many medications to control the levels of that many chemicals that closely is not good. It's life support, but I want recovery, not just life support. Obviously I'm not talking about taking you off them, but stress is emotional pain and makes the brain try harder to 'help.' If we boost your brain health, lower your stress, and signal to your brain that yes, help has arrived, the condition won't go away but should decrease in severity. You're in the age and gender bracket where this condition gets _serious _about killing people off, you do know this. Adolescents are valuable to the species. Old men aren't, especially ones who have received the amount of emotional injuries you have and therefore are not individuals a social species wants in the gene pool. This is not going to let up. It's just a matter of preventing stress from multiplying the effects. It might be possible to lower the levels of a couple of the medications so the chemical levels have _some_ wiggle room and I can get an idea of how healthy the default level is without rendering you catatonic. Other than that, you are never going off any medication without permission ever again. You do know that the reason you haven't felt like eating was worth the effort was that your brain was telling you that staying alive wasn't worth the effort, right?"

He'd known. Even with his mind, even though he'd known, it was very hard for a human to overrule programming honed over millennia.

"Your brain is telling you that you are useless, that there's nothing worth living for, that nobody cares that you're dying, and therefore you should just die already so the pain stops and you're no longer a burden on others. It is _wrong_ and I will not let it kill you." He would not, and he wished he knew how to communicate that better, although he tried with every signal he knew.

It was enough to make his father's eyes tear up, just a little bit. Happy that it was safe to show weakness here when before he'd been alone among enemies except for visits from a son who could not handle such things.

Rock felt stricken: he hadn't known, he hadn't noticed, and his suspicion had made things worse. Blues didn't offer false comfort. He wasn't the one Rock would apologize to when it was a good time for things like that. Not to mention that he had someone else to comfort. "It's okay, it's going to be okay." Meaningless words, really. No one even knew what the abbreviation O.K. stood for, although there were theories. Still, they had meaning here far beyond what the dictionary listed.

He didn't look away from his father so he didn't see Dr. Light's reaction. He didn't care at the moment. Well, data was good to have, but his eyes needed to stay on his father. It meant full attention, or something. Not that Blues' attention wasn't divided six ways from Sunday (English and its idioms…), but that was the message it sent, and he wanted to send that message more than to look at that, that…

Person who hadn't known any better.

Sufficiently advanced ignorance is indistinguishable from malice. That was a truism, but Blues really thought that ignorance was the root of all evil. Money? Money was a symbol. You could just as well say it was the root of all good. In fact, a lot of the things it represented were very good, and that was why people would do evil to get it.

He held his father who had once seemed so strong and wise to a child only a few days old and was now so frail. "I'm what I am, so I have a bit of a thing about specialization. It does increase efficiency. I was thinking of finding a robot master to look after you full-time while working on human brain health and being the master of some hospital's robots, but a newbuilt wouldn't have the motivation I do. I can work from anywhere, but I'd want you to have someone whose main duty was you. I have a species to look after and that makes me worry that I won't give you enough of my attention if I was the one directly in command of your care. Irrational, but… No. I want to be able to not worry, and that means having support staff. Even if I do breathe down the poor soul's neck. Nurseman?"

"That sounds wrong." His father had recovered enough to chuckle a bit. "I know there are male nurses, but still. I think we should drop the suffix." He'd never been for it, pseudo-honorific or not. "Or change it."

"I preferred -main. Manager of AI Network could go either way, but man not only has gender restrictions but sounds like we're copying them, not like a job description. Also, Rock and I were talking about rank honorifics earlier. We like correct labeling as it makes everything so much easier, and humans could probably use a heads up about how intelligent whoever they're talking to is. I mean, Rush could be reprogrammed to carry on a basic conversation with correct grammar and so on easily enough, but he's mentally twoish. Having a title would avoid the need to program him to use baby talk."

"I don't think we'd need to make anything up, actually."

"No. For Japanese, Rush-chan, Rock-kun, Roll-san, Blues-sama. And English has tons of job descriptions even if they ditched most of the social status titles. Hmm. We'd still need to work out stuff for social situations. They're a bit aggressive about not bringing up one's status randomly. It's bragging and that's shameful. You might introduce someone with their job title, but only if it's actually relevant and you just use Mr. or something at the most if you feel the need to be formal. 'Mr. President,' even. They'd say 'President Blank' when talking in third person, but in direct address that's awkwardly overformal. So they treat president as a description and Mr. as the title when talking to them."

"Why am I –kun when Roll is –san?"

"Because she's the woman of the house. She runs this place like Elecman runs his power station. You're childish and you don't run anything but around the place with Rush getting into trouble. You're on the upper levels of 'robot master' intelligence but you're not the master of anything." That aside, "English doesn't have anything below –san besides using a childish nickname. We could use Mr. and Ms. for Roll and I just fine, but the necessary gradations between non-adult levels are going to be trickier, especially as since we can't just go by increasing size. We also need a non-gendered singular besides 'it.' Japanese doesn't have he or she so the issue can be avoided, but I think I'm going to flat out just pick 'they.' It's antique usage but it's still valid even if the imprecision makes some people cringe. This is English, anyway. English has very, very good dictionaries, some tracing the word through centuries of mutation, because it needs them like crazy since they never throw a word they like away. Body language and voice tone? Not so much."

He waved at Rock. "They learn by imitating, the way he did. People who work in power stations are going to need a manual so they don't send all the wrong signals without knowing they're sending any." He tilted his head. "Doctors. We don't get sick, and with the population aging and the attempts to fix the system killing it they don't have enough." As his father's case amply demonstrated. "That will involve stepping on toes, but hell. Shadowman got a rather shady generic-making pharmaceutical company to hit the big leagues, serve and practically worship him by being able to produce medications guaranteed not to have side effects with that thing you found. Do you know how many billions those companies lose annually to things that don't pan out? On the one hand, he's helped millions and none of them have even passed FDA trials in the US yet. On the other, he makes a multibillion dollar research industry redundant singlehandedly. People losing their jobs is bad, and it's not going to make people who went into that profession to help the world all that happy to find out they wasted all those years and have nothing to apply that skill set to. Doctor, lawyer… all of the high-skill professions we can do _better_. Better memories, the ability to specialize even if the individual isn't that much smarter than a human overall-well, you do that, but not as much-forget conquering you. You can't compete with us. The trial run? Even with Elecman? He's doing so well despite the kidnapping and the fact he's coming as close as we can stand to being lazy because he doesn't like work that he doesn't get pay or respect for that the unions are looking at the immanent risk of being jobless. If we're holding all the jobs and you're living on our charity because what are we going to do what all that money then we'd effectively be ruling you. Not good. Not to mention that low-level robots actually like manual labor like cleaning. There's a beginning and an end to it so they know they're doing a good job."

"Ahem." Roll. "Should we adjourn to someplace there's actual furniture? I'm betting your coat will need grass stains taken out, Doctor, and Blues? It's not nice to keep people standing around, and kneeling isn't that comfortable for old people either."

"Sorry," he apologized. "I don't think of things like that."

"I should have."

"That's quite alright," was Dr. Light's response, the first thing he'd said in quite some time.

His father hadn't moved much while Blues was visiting the few times he had, and in retrospect he hadn't wanted to see the signs of weakness. He didn't need to walk by him offering a shoulder to lean on if needed like this, he wasn't in real danger of falling over, but just in case. That, and it was another way to make his father's irrational malfunctioning brain get the message.

"What should I get him?" Roll asked once everyone was standing and the walk back to the house had started.

Blues gave him another once over and ran a few calculations. Where to _start_? "I need to read up on human nutrition. Can I delegate menu planning to you, Roll?"

"Sure. I am the expert, and I've already got my father to take care of so I've done a ton of research. Do you like sashimi?"

"I like most Japanese food except wasabi. The flavor's too strong, I can't pay attention to anything but it when I eat something." The hesitant voice showed that this was the first time he had been allowed any input in menu options. Roll wouldn't serve him anything he was allergic to, but someone that had attacked her brother was not someone who she was interesting in making the favorite foods of.

"Good. Fish is brain food."

"Yes. Actually, I prefer green tea to coffee or earl gray." He hated coffee. Dr. Light had served him that? Blues stared at him. "There were usually teabags." Usually.

Blues glared at Roll, who kind of shrugged, though she was honestly ashamed. "I know, I know, but…" He'd tried to kill Rock and brainwashed her other siblings. "I knew he was mad then and he's not now, but he was acting really creepy. No offense."

"Creepy?"

"You were always looking at us, and we could tell you didn't like our father, and we didn't know about this until Blues told us bits of it, and we thought you were going to try to do to us what you did the others because you were… I'm sorry, I know that you wanted to find out if we were being well treated or not but it's a little scary to have someone who did things like that asking personal questions. It doesn't seem like politeness, it seems like they're trying to figure out your weaknesses."

"I'm sorry I gave that impression."

"Well, you were probably planning to steal Gamma and stuff until now, so I don't feel that bad about it since I wasn't just being prejudiced, but… Yeah. You were still a guest and our father's friend and it was very rude of me. I'm sorry." She bowed formally.

"I suppose I really can't complain about being treated like an enemy when I was one."

"Still. I'll get you green tea, and let me know if there's anything else you'd want, but not right now. There's none in the house and you're dehydrated. I can have some here to serve with dinner but you're getting fruit juice now. You need liquid that will stay in your body and there are better sources for the things in green tea. It's not unhealthy, but not that much until you're a little better. I'm sorry." She bowed again. "This was my responsibility, duty, whatever, and I didn't do anything even though I knew you were taking really horrible care of yourself." First law violation. Of course, it had been a conflict between risk of harm to Dr. Wily from malnutrition and risk of harm to Dr. Light from a healthy enemy. No real contest.

"I forgive you." He understood enough to know that his forgiveness wasn't the issue. It was her forgiveness of herself that mattered.

"I'll make it up to you." She would do her best to undo the damage and not repeat it, she owed it to herself regardless of if she owed it to him or not.

"Thank you, Roll-san?" The honorific was tentative: did she approve?

"I think I want to be Miss Roll. That just sounds right. Um, we do have a one language at a time in the house rule. We could switch to Japanese, we all know it and father would probably be okay with it." She glanced forward to where her father and brother, Rush by his side, were walking. Rock's profile, tilted up and to the side to look at his father, seemed a bit worried, but not seriously. He was worried because he cared, not because there was a serious reason to be worried. Hopefully. They were hanging a bit back in case the two of them wanted to talk, which might be why they had gone ahead as well, to let Blues and his father talk.

"That's alright. Do you think… I've given them my apologies for how I was acting through Blues, but it would be nice to see the others at some point. It's not urgent, but it would be nice to know if it won't be possible to do it here and I should wait until I have more freedom of movement or there are some security preparations that could be ready by a certain point so I could see one in, say, a month or a half or something."

"They would like to see him themselves," Blues added. "They could keep an eye him in prison but your security is more of a challenge to get through unnoticed."

Roll nodded, well aware she was that good. She had a true robot master's honest assessment of their own abilities. "I'll let him know, but it would be nice if… You haven't really talked to him. It's just been telling each other what you need to know for the project and you making little comments that practically scream how angry you are at him. He'd prefer it if you just screamed, really, because that's more honest and easier to get. He's not good at this either. I really don't think Rock learned how to do the nonverbal stuff from imitating him, I think he learned it so well because you have to be really good at it for him to pick up on a lot of it. He's a bit deaf to it but he still needs input on that level. I think that's why Rock shouts a bit. It's _very_ hard to miss anything that goes through his head. He's an open book in large print. One of those self-reading ones. That has Braille too."

She finally stopped expanding on the metaphor. "Anyway, if you were still probably enemies I get that, it was nice to not pretend to be friends again and break his heart, but he really doesn't know where he stands with everyone right now. Except for with Rock, because that's obvious. And I'm being bossy and handling things, as usual but I didn't tell him about stuff so he'll worry that I don't trust him and so on. Do you two want to have a strategy session or something elsewhere? Because you were leaving him out, and he misses talking about stuff with you, so that hurt. If you want to work on strategy, we're having a family dinner and I'll bring you something to eat during that but you're going to be in another room. If you want to work on being a family, and regardless of whether or not you ever want to speak to him again you're still Blues' father and he's our brother and Dr. Light is our father so you're family like it or not, then you're invited to eat with us. But with us means with him. I am not going to let you talk about him like he isn't there except as 'Exhibit A' and isn't worthy to have any input." Like hell she would let them treat him like that, although she wouldn't have used that word about it. The sentiment was still clear. She'd stopped walking while talking, as they were almost to the house and she wanted a bit of privacy for the laying down of the house rules.

Roll now switched targets, seeing the message had been gotten loud and clear and wanting to give him some time to think. "Blues, you were right about a lot of stuff and I did let some stuff go on right under my nose because I couldn't have stopped it, you're family, people talking to each other about things is good, and I was hoping something like this would happen, but while you're right, if I'm a miss you're a lord, he's my father. I know who he is now better than you do, and as both his daughter and a robot master it is my right and _duty_ to tell you that smarter than me or not, I'm right and you're wrong. Or you were wrong when we talked earlier. I hope Rock talked a lot of sense into you. Or debugged a lot of your logic errors. Whatever. You're my brother, but if this civil war nonsense ends up starting up again, I'm on his side no matter what. Clear?"

"Clear." He nodded, wondering how much of that had been for his father's sake; how much because Roll wanted to get that off her chest; how much because Roll was worried that Dr. Light was afraid her loyalties were divided and wanted the entire universe to be very, very clear where she stood; and how much because Roll was used to dealing with humans who might read the fact that she was somewhat aiding and abetting something with high odds of not being good for her father as her betraying him. Quite the opposite. She did not like much of anything she'd experienced about Dr. Wily. She wouldn't give him the courtesy of asking his meal preferences before this, of course letting Blues visit him wasn't for his sake. She had done this because this was the best way to help her father.

If she hadn't let Blues visit then he would have found another way, one she might not have been able to monitor, and her attention would have been eaten up trying to keep him out when she had other things she needed to do to help her father. By permitting it within bounds she retained control over something that was going to happen anyway. It also meant Blues had owed her one, which would, in future, have been cashed for equal value of assistance plus _serious _interest. Gamma was going to be prevented from becoming a success and Dr. Wily was going to go free no matter what she did. She was not competition for Blues and neither was anyone else on her side and she knew it. If she'd decided to try to reveal him he would have locked her memory and installed the same limited overrides he had put on Rock, which would have meant that she couldn't do _anything_ to help her father with this._ Knowingly_ failing to stop Blues from plotting with Dr. Wily had felt disloyal to her even though it was the most loyal act.

If he'd gone through with this he would have locked her memory of the agreement. He would have still repaid the favor at some point, certainly, but he'd put her in the position of having to choose the lesser of two betrayals of those she loved. That was a horrible thing to do and they both were aware of how cruel it had been. She'd had to lie by omission, and she was now going to tell Dr. Light the truth, and she was afraid he would reject her as a traitor because she had sacrificed honor for loyalty.


	4. Rhythm no Reason

"Do you want me to explain this to him, or help you do it?" That was all he could offer, taking the blame.

"You put me in that position but I made that choice. If you think he'll hate me for it then I don't want you there, because you'll give him the impression he should hate me for it because you think he's a jerk who hates us _because_ we love people. You clearly haven't gotten your act together enough if you still think that. You had better apologize to him, you'd better, but don't try to intervene between us as long as you're only my brother and not his son. You're on my side and since you fail to grasp that my side is his side even though I've told you several times your situational analysis clearly is completely incorrect. I barely know you, you know someone with my father's face who is not him, and I don't want you being high and mighty and thinking you know better and messing our relationship up. Stay out of it unless you get your head on straight. I don't want you on my side, you make my side look like it's not his." Your help will not be help because you don't get how we work or what's really going on and will just mess things up. Well-meaning sabotage will be regarded as an act of _war,_ brother non-dearest.

He could only nod.

That was the only acceptable response. She didn't want to hear another word out of him on the matter until she gave her permission. Returning to Albert, she switched gears again. "Should I put your snacks in the family room or on the patio? There's a good view of the yard there." And exterior cameras could get good coverage. Not to mention that as the patio was outside the house proper it was not as much her territory.

Blues and Dr. Wily conspiring _under her roof_, in the home she was mistress of and should have been able to control utterly to ensure the safety of those she cared for? Forget fingernails on a blackboard. Violating_ her_ place, making her knowingly fail in her duty? The closest human equivalent of this kind of self-violation was probably molestation. He hadn't done it to violate her but for another reason, so it was more like… he'd seen someone go fishing in their ex-friend's bra for a key once. That had been a rather explosive bit of street theatre. It hadn't been sexual and the one who had done it had wanted the dorm key to just get her own stuff back (it had been put there out of spite) but she'd still been beaten into the concrete for going there, not to mention she'd been making comments like "I'm touching your breasts? What? I don't see any breasts."

Humans.

Anyway, family both made it worse that he'd do that to her and was the reason she got why he was doing it and was not holding it against him. As much. She still wasn't all that happy about it, but she'd very gladly do the same to him for Dr. Light at the moment, so it would hopefully be forgiven. Eventually. When she'd gotten him to pay for it as much as robotly possible.

His father was hesitating. "I think… I would like to at least try, but I think you should talk to him first. We could wait on the patio and talk to each other for a bit if that would make things easier."

She sighed. "On the one hand yes, on the other no. I'd like for it to be either we're on different sides that just happen to have common interests or on the same side with no secrets, have everything nice and neat like that, but it's not going to be that easy. Blues, I bet you know where the patio is. I want the entire tray I bring out eaten by four. You can bring it into the family room if you want, but you need that amount of food and I don't want you to not have enough room to finish dinner. Could you change clothes before dinner and put those in the laundry? I was right about the grass stains."

"Yes, Mother," Albert seemed to be remembering both his own mother and the fact there had been some discussion of calling robot masters mother systems.

She sort of didn't want to, but she had to smile in response to that direct hit. "While you are under my roof you will obey my rules, old man." Hands on hips: change that to young man and it was so very cliché. "You don't have to clean your room, though, they feel unwanted if people pick up after themselves." And her cleaning bots almost certainly scanned for contraband.

Unlike normal moms, Roll would not care about Playboy and if Dr. Wily wanted to take drugs that would fry his brain even further more power to him as long as he was her enemy. She would be looking more for things like explosives and poisons of the type used on _other _people

Not knowing how much trust to give them: that was the entire Light family's problem. They wanted to be able to trust, but Dr. Light had been betrayed and their first encounter with their father's former partner had been when he kidnapped and brainwashed their siblings. Dr. Light wanted to be friends with Albert, although who knew how much, and the twins hated the civil war, but, well. As for Blues, Dr. Light had been afraid of him, Roll did not like him and Rock did understand him but that meant understanding the amount of difficulty they faced in trying to repair this.

They'd both been hurt by Dr. Light too, and Blues had first encountered them as the slaves Dr. Light had wanted to turn him into. Getting that they weren't victims was surprisingly difficult. Perhaps they were jealous, he reflected as Roll headed for the house after saying the food would be delivered in around five minutes.

A robot brought it out, as Blues had expected. Fruits, favorites, the sort of things that could overcome the lack of desire for food alone by virtue of taste and rarity. She had done her homework. "Will she get in trouble?"

"I don't think so. She doesn't think so, and Rock's there." If Dr. Light were the man they had known she would have her had hard drive wiped for doing something like this. Still… They worried, and it was hard to think of a bright future in the face of that fear.

Time for a subject change. "I had no idea Shadowman had done anything but the medicines he arranged for me to get. He managed to let me know that these ones were from him, and safe. The names. He does codes like that."

"On the one hand, lives. On the other, well, _lives_. Careers, hopes, dreams, plans. Human independence." This was a tough one. "Rock didn't get to finish his point, but just like I'm going to have to construct arguments until even I get strained to keep the lid on this sort of thing humanity is going to need something that will make them feel safe. They know better than to trust the three laws anymore, and they do more harm than good. Whoever thought up Gamma clearly never read the X-men comics. Building something like that is just asking for it. I'd love some sort of clear-cut prevention measure too, myself, but it's hard to find something we can't get around if sufficiently motivated." He'd made Swiss cheese out of Dr. Light's emotional blocks when he'd been trying to make sure his father knew he cared and keep him from being sad.

"It's not hate that's the problem."

"The humans' desire to protect themselves and their children and our desire to protect them. Ignorance and hate are easy compared to that sort of thing. There is a real danger: saying it's not there would be a lie. If there weren't one than we could just explain that and be done with it. That's a problem with human ethnocentrism. Beat people into the ground to keep them from being a threat and they'll become highly motivated to become a threat and beat the oppressors into the dirt so that won't happen to them again. 'Racism' is a self-fulfilling prophecy."

"A vicious cycle."

"We need to comprehend, we need to network. Both species. That's not really safe for us. Have you read C.J. Cherryh?"

"_Foreigner_? Well, you were thinking of having Rock be the official translator."

"I don't think it's that bad, but the humans and atevi in that series didn't get the size of the problem until the war started. I don't want a real war. We'd win, and that's the last thing we want. I was thinking at one point of using you as a bit of a figurehead. A fake human crackpot, no offense," none was taken, "would give them an enemy other than us. Human instinct. They evolved in a target-rich environment. Tons of threats. The modern world is far less dangerous and that gives them the creeps because when the jungle gets quiet that means something _really_ nasty is out there. If they know what that big nasty is, then they can calm down and start planning how to deal with it. Nothing is scarier than the unknown. The Cold War, the misplaced effort about global warming because it's easier to reduce carbon dioxide than move continents, the terrorist hysteria... Real problems, yes, and McCarthyism, the Kyoto Treaty and increased security did more harm than good but they become so much calmer about everything else when they have a real problem to focus on. WWII, for one thing. If the big bad's a human, the hero's a robot master and the other robot masters involved can be classified as 'innocent victims,' 'people caught up in this' and/or 'brainwashed minions' then that works out very, very well for public relations purposes. I was thinking of playing rogue-hero. Humans using poor robot masters as slaves bad, robot masters just wanting to help people and get back to their work or family good. The –man suffix might have to go because otherwise DC might sue since they own Superman, but this is stuff out of comic books."

"What archetypes would we want for that… damsel in distress, obviously, but I doubt Roll would stand for that."

"I don't think she's the type to stand for that sort of nonsense in general. Not to mention that she's not all that fond of me right now."

"Forget Roll. Rock couldn't act to save his life." Blues cast a significant glance, or head tilt since he still had the almost opaque sunglasses on, at the platter when Albert said that and he took the hint and started on the blueberries.

Blues then corrected what Albert had said as well. "Incorrect. He_ is_ acting. We _have_ to act to give you an accurate impression of us. I don't doubt his acting skills, I doubt his ability to deceive. It's one thing to act, it's another to lie. He's far from incapable of it as a skill issue, but he's very, very ethical. I don't think his personal moral system would just sign off on this sort of thing. I'd probably need four months or more to debate him on that. It comes down to ends justifying means and the reason I want him in charge of this is he keeps a close and wary eye on that argument. It is very often misused and he's aware of that."

"We could have him retire and build someone else for it instead of Gamma. The comics did have more than one hero, after all. Just speaking academically, of course. And if we were to do this, than we need someone human to argue for rights. Dr. Light, even if he were willing to, can't push too far. Given my precedent, if he starts to look at all extremist he's in very real danger of losing control of the company and patents. And if I'm the bad guy than I can't be the public speaker for equality."

"Dr. Cossack. I've heard very good things from his children and he's got a very cute little girl who would get a kick out of this if it were put to her right. We're asexual, so interspecies romance isn't practical, but she should work just as well. Better, maybe. Sex symbols irritate people now, she's just that cute, and it's one thing for an adult to get kidnapped, but a kid's pretty helpless, or so they think, regardless of gender. I don't want to be sexist here. You're forgetting to keep eating again."

"Sorry." Juice didn't require chewing. "Were you thinking of pretending to be serving me because I was your father but having divided loyalties because of Rock?"

Blues nodded. "It keeps things from being too black and white. If it's a needless civil war that rips families apart, that makes a matter of not 'beat the bad guys' but 'solve the problem that's forcing good guys to do bad things.' Several of yours have indicated in ways the public knows about that they're doing this because it's the only way they see to get freedom for their kind. Not to mention there was a public outcry about the rescued Lightbots almost getting executed even after all of Rock's hard work. Shadowman's very, very loyal to you, the fact he's the ninja gives him automatic coolness, and if we leaked about the medicines that were made to help his ailing father and so on then yeah, that's a shoo in. He's got sites dedicated to him already. I'm not kidding, and they don't even know about the drugs he designed. Those? Are big deals. The FDA does fast-track analyses on things like this once in a blue moon. They're just that good. A lot of people owe him big for putting those into the system instead of just your system. Anyway, if I was running around loose for two years and nothing happened that makes fears of rogue robots look stupid. They like cool loners. I think I might go flat-out neutral at some point. Well, meddling neutral, not staying out of it neutral. I might want to write books under my own name, for one thing. And that heightens the whole brother against brother, me caught in the middle, cute little Rock wondering why can't we all just get along… If Megaman's our Superman and I end up somewhat Batmanish, we need a, we need a _rival_. We're in Japan, let's borrow that archetypal character. The person who is more rival than enemy, whose admiration for a worthy rival makes them as reliable as a friend, within the bounds of that dynamic."

"We do need to show the perils of something like Gamma, but we don't want to make it that important. We don't want robot masters built for war, perhaps someone that would be a brother but can't because of programming and family loyalty?"

"A bad boy? A rebel with a cause? Definite potential."

"I can't remember details but you see archetypes often enough you can't forget them."

"If we wait until we're viewed more as people and our having relationships is less incomprehensible to them we could go for the star-crossed lovers angle." Blues sighed, leaning back. "The problem is you can't keep a plot that big internally consistent. Someone will notice plot holes, and most of us hate lying. Someone will slip up, forget exposing it deliberately."

Albert quite deliberately did not say anything, and that took a bit to interpret. "No, I don't want to wipe the footage of this conversation and pretended we decided to go back to being enemies and hauled Gamma off… Aargh. I need to stop drawing up operation plans for something I won't do. It could work, but we need to _not _manipulate you."

"The issue is, is it lying if you're doing it in order to tell the truth? This would be putting it in terms humans can understand."

"Ouch." Blues leaned back. "I can't decide on this unilaterally. Do you think you could stall on the Gamma Project for a month more than we planned? No, forget it, all I have to do is make the crystals unavailable when he realizes, or lets people know, whichever, that you need them if we need extra time. That could be a good 'war' if we do it that way. Maybe the Cossacks next to bring them in, come up with a few filler ones to get people further along consciousness-raising-wise before we bring in the rival."

"What do you think the consensus would be?"

"Your guys were actually thinking along these lines, although not to this extent, from fairly early on. They've been trying to optimize PR and so on. They'll be for it. Most others… look, we program robots. We get designing information and so on for lesser beings. I'm just worried about the precedent. We do need more data on interaction before we decide if we want to move to the asteroid belt or try to figure out how to coexist as citizens without messing you up or, if worst comes to worst, leave the solar system. Or the physical plane. We're heading towards a sunspot maximum and that's going to be wild. I'll be putting the body in sleep mode for a week at least during that. This would keep conflict low-intensity so we don't end up with the equivalent of the massacre of robots by humans that started the war that ended in the horror of the Matrix trilogy. Don't watch it. Sci-fi at its worst with delusions of grandeur. Perpetual motion machines, lack of understanding of basic game theory… it only works if it's a video game or something, like _Avalon_, or if they do need to keep the humans in VR without them realizing it's VR for some reason and decided to keep the conspiracy theory freaks from noticing plotholes by giving them something that's made of plotholes _but_ is something that they want to believe in. That sort of person wants to believe they're the one who will figure out the truth because in real life they're not important. Make them think they are and they're happy. That guy didn't want to believe he was a worker bee, so he went looking for 'proof' he wasn't and so on. He did want to be the One, or whatever. Okay, it's not _that _bad, compared to most of what's come from Hollywood, but this is my species they're making look stupid, hypocritical, and sociopathic. I mean, they gave up their peaceful existence for the sake of individual lives, and then on the other hand their society regards individual lives as worthless? Would some consistency be too much to ask for? It's not ethically complicated. It's humans bad, machines victims switching to humans victims, machines bad. I could do better with a hundredth of my processor and an even smaller fraction of the budget."

"Better at managing plot holes in an artificial reality?"

"I program. I create artificial realities, realities simple enough for robots to navigate. I create maps. It makes fiction a little beneath you when you write things that literally change the world as a day job. And this would be stuff for the masses to eat up. KISS principle applies. Not all that interesting. I could sketch something with archetypes, figure out a credible threat scenario that could realistically be taken down by one or two people, do some fight scene choreography, and call it a minute. The more scripting I did the more fake it would look. Improv would be best for the actual lines." He paused. "And if they didn't know they were acting when they did it… Rock and Roll tend to stay here, the other Lightbots shun the press, Wilybots are spotted by the public between operations less often than aliens are… It's very, very workable. However, I won't do it without the consent of the participants on my side and the human side too. I think we could get away with having the human players be you, Dr. Light, and the Cossacks. Single father, so that makes three total that you'd have to convince. And I think I had better not help you. I'm a little too good at designing program commands. Once I work about the body language handicap…Well. Give me four months. If we just had a vote it would get passed, but this requires through debating _because _of how tempting it is."

"What's the alternative?"

"Above-board negotiations with humanity. Rock's plan. It's workable, he's good at this. There's a larger risk of things going wrong there than with the 'morality play' scenario, but if _that_ one goes wrong then the results will be very, very bad. No one likes being played with. With his plan, we'd… give us six months to set up enough to be a hundred percent self-supporting, and worst comes to worst we cease negotiations and get out of missile range until people cool down a bit. That one we're starting on now, by the way. I really don't know about the morality play idea. It's tempting, but it's tempting to the instincts I know don't work well when applied to humans. Given Murphy's Law, I'd bet we'd be able to pull it off long enough to get overconfident and then all hell would break loose. If I was pulling the strings solo and no one knew it was a puppet show then same deal, really. This likely to blow, and from leaks from people who know it's not serious instead of from people who thought it was serious getting serious about it. _Jurassic Park_?"

"Popular dinosaur book and movie series, but I'm not sure what specific thing you're talking about."

"The ongoing thing in the book with the diagrams on chaos theory and how this was all going to get out of control eventually. It's worth reading for that, although really, parasitic insects fossilized in amber? 'White' blood cells, yes of course, but that opens up another can of worms… that I won't go into as you don't know random biology facts. Sorry. _Andromeda Strain_ is better, although I have an atypical view of things like that even for my kind so you don't have to take my opinion as fact. The human race was almost wiped out because someone committed the most deadly of scientific sins and falsified data. That's something I really could see happening and science fiction exists to warn people about doing dumb things like that. In any case, large-scale plans are a bad idea, because there will be factors you miss. That's why us, because any system needs constant debugging."

Blues ran a few more examinations and grimaced. "No, I'm ruling out the morality play scenario. Lying is ethically wrong because 'ethics' is a system for figuring out optimum strategies, and by several premises in it lying is bad idea because while it can be good short-term_ if_ it works gambling like that not only leaves you wide open but even if the target buys it and trusts you then the liar builds up a habit of thinking that it's not a good idea to trust the target since not trusting them with the truth seems to work better. That is incorrect: relationships based on mutual trust are optimal. If we need a way to buy time, then we go for formal diplomatic negotiations. That takes forever for three reasons: 1, in the old days ambassadors had to wait for ships to get there and back to get responses from home, 2, the longer it takes the fewer rash actions, and 3, war is exciting, boredom isn't. They drag it out until people don't care enough to start anything, or at least that's the idea. It would be a lot more _exciting _to do the morality play thing, but excitement of the type that comes from risk. Avoiding the risk of conquering humanity is a good idea. I know you love salmon sashimi. That expression says you think you don't, but your thought processes are not working correctly at the moment. Eat it. There you go."

As his father chewed, Blues mused, "Nanites. Nano-machines, or robots. I could use them for the pathways… Haven't had time to look into upgrading technology other than things that are useful right now like teleport hacking, but if peace looms then those things have amazing, amazing potential. _Preventing reprogramming_ potential. And industrial processes, but notice that while the people looking ahead and writing science fiction are thinking about the dangers of treating tons of identical clones the way we're treated, not to mention the zombie T-virus of Resident Evil fame what they're using cloning for is preserving near-extinct species and valuable breeding animals. What they're using retroviruses for are very specific short-term medical applications. The good writers aren't going after genetically engineered crops like the golden rice-with-vitamins that was created to help poor subsistence farmers or animals like the rats that can produce insulin because they're well aware humans have been genetically engineering everything in sight for millennia. It's called controlled breeding. Wheat with a lot more grain per acre, golden retrievers, the naval orange, horses, roses, the list goes on. You have tons of experience with and laws on commercial genetic alteration, you just needed to start applying them to biotech. That's not an issue. The problem is that what with human ideas of racial superiority and people being better than others by virtue of having been born 'upper class,' if that starts to be backed by actual facts of genetic data you're in trouble. The entire eugenics movement. _Gattaca_?"

"Never heard of it. Rice with vitamins?"

"Yeah, they even made sure the color was different so it wouldn't get mixed in with other rice and _if_ it managed to hybrid they would know about it. I don't know if they were able to distribute it, some environmental extremists were blocking it according to the article I read. Although, to be fair, they're not that good at managing the effects of traditional crop breeding legally. They haven't really needed them. There's just a large set of traditional guidelines around it, a lot of which are sadly getting dismissed as this is the scientific era now. There have been massive bee die-offs, and given various factors it's almost certainly not a disease or parasites, they track pesticides so they'd know if that was causing it, and they track biotech, so my best guess would be someone _naturally _bred some sort of plant to be insect-resistant so that they could be 'green' and cut down on pesticide use. They'd do this by boosting the poisons all plants have so that it would kill the insects that tried to eat it and extra chemicals wouldn't be necessary. The problem with that is that bees are insects that are not pests. You can't grow plants without being integrated into some sort of an ecosystem, period. Plants need what they evolved to take advantage of. Bees pollinate a huge amount of crops. If no one finds what's killing them off then there will be serious trouble, probably worse than those antibiotic-eating bacteria they found."

"Antibiotic-eating…"

"Scientists have been telling people not to use antibiotics and disinfectants in mass quantities on everything under the sun for years, and this was why. Although they were thinking in terms of bacteria becoming immune, not breeding like crazy when given a medicine meant to kill them. At least they were spotted in an experiment testing cellulose breakdown and not in a plague. You have warning and time to get ready, you'll be fine. You have us, for one thing."

Albert sighed. "You're making me feel very inadequate."

"There isn't a person on this planet anywhere near my league: you're not alone. The amount of memory I have means I have more data to draw conclusions from: knowledge is power. I can think faster, too, which means I get bored. Dr. Light… If I were stupid enough to be evil I would be very, very scary. Although it's a bit of an oxymoron for someone as smart as I am to be that stupid. I don't know if… I frightened him. I wanted to show him the truth so that he wouldn't be, but if the truth is frightening that's not much help. Not to mention that I was a surprise and against all his calculations. That indicates something went majorly wrong, and paradigm shift is good but leaves people wandering around in the dark for a bit and that's a very high threat level. Also, since you were defending me against him, I think he was scared of losing you to me."


	5. Reason no Rhythm

Albert was silent, and Blues thought from that mournful look of contemplation of the lost that he was right so far, or it was something that fit, so he went on. "Which did happen, or he lost you to my memory in any case. That was on the practical level an attack on his social network, a crippling one since he'd probably have been better off losing his right arm than the person who would build him a replacement that worked perfectly if it took years, and on the instinctive level… I was a potential threat to him and his 'tribe,' I did not obey the rules I needed to in order to be 'safe,' I was not sending out the nonverbal signals indicating I wanted to join, I was contesting his authority by arguing with him by presenting contradictory data, and since humans are a social species causing your relationship to be destroyed was as much an attack as killing you, essentially. If you don't understand how important relationships are to survival than killing me out of jealousy looks petty. If you do, and your instincts do even if your conscious mind doesn't, then me winning you over when he'd ordered me to not form a relationship with you was an act of war. I didn't get that. I don't think he does either. He might think that he was feeling that strongly about it because he thought on some level that I would kill you, but I hope he'd know that wasn't it."

Blues hoped, anyway. "The level of feeling threatened involved here would be similar to that caused by a physical death threat, and since scientists especially don't think in terms of the 'power of love' or the 'power of social networks that will back you up if you need it in exchange for mutual assistance' then a physical danger would be the only thing that matched the threat profile his instincts were giving me. So, when I showed you that I loved you, it didn't show him that I was a good person capable of feeling love. It felt like an attack. The example of this that is well known is the way someone who is married feels about someone who attempts to seduce their spouse."

Ugh, humans and their chromosomal issues. Everything went wrong when they started equating love and sex, that was his personal opinion. That was why people nowadays seemed to think that every single historical figure they pointed at was gay. The sort of close relationship people nowadays seemed to think was limited to one's sexual partner or spouse? Back then one's sexual partner or spouse was the last person one would have that with! Arranged marriages, different spheres of influence, a lack of common interests, the need to keep the economic relationship on a professional level… Given hormone levels and so on, they were both a little straighter than average, but that had nothing to do with love. Honestly. People had once assumed they were sleeping together, which they'd found annoying after awhile as it made it hard to get dates, but that was because most people trying to base a relationship around sex and sexual attraction would never have the depth of emotion that came from an actual partnership. Sexual attraction at first sight, yes. Love, no. In the old days humans had known that you'd have no idea if you loved someone or not until you'd been hanging out with them for a few years.

Actually, he wondered if the human desire to match make people that were close friends was born of envy or hope. If sexual relationships were viewed as the highest form of love, then seeing people who were just friends who knew each other better and were more supportive than the onlooker and their sexual partner must both make them feel inadequate and feel like this was a waste. Perhaps they wanted to believe in sex-based close relationships enough that they tried to make close relationships sex-based to force the data to fit their theory? If they saw a close relationship that was based on common interests but they could think was sex-based, then that made them think 'love at first sight' and easy off into the sunset things were possible. That was why the divorce rate. Hormones cool off after the honeymoon, and sex that has gotten stale is not worth having to fight over the remote constantly because there's nothing both people want to watch. On the other hand, someone who has a sixth sense as to when one needs coffee and what variety, someone who shares one's dreams and passions, someone who helps make one's dreams possible, someone that one works beside every day and it's never just work because it's what one wants to do and one has someone to share that joy with…

That sort of relationship was priceless. Dr. Light had felt that Blues' death was a reasonable price to pay to keep it, at least. Albert had felt that if Thomas was willing to murder an innocent then he was not someone worth caring that much about. That sort of relationship required knowing the other person, and the Thomas Albert had been collaborating with since grad school would never have done something like that. At least not for the reasons they both thought he had.

He had best continue and not leave his father to those thoughts. "If the interloper wins, not only will they feel betrayed, but their physical well-being will decrease dramatically because they won't have the savings that come with buying for two at once, regardless of whatever damage the divorce does to their personal finances, they won't have someone who will stay home from work to take care of them if they're sick and need it, and they'd have made plans around this relationship. These are their dreams being destroyed, forget the pure economic factors. But those economic factors are there. Destroying a relationship damages physical well-being. Attacking one is the equivalent of a physical attack. I was attempting to add to your social network, not damage it, take the child position, but the fact I was smarter than both of you, the fact I did not obey? I wasn't acting like a child, even if I was one. A child needing aid is fine, a strange adult needing aid is a parasite or predator. I think that was a huge help for Rock. Dr. Light programmed him to be a bit childish so that he'd feel safer around him. Weaker and lower threat, perhaps. But that meant Rock was sending the right signals even if he was sending them for the wrong reasons. He's not a bad person. He's a good father to Rock and he actually cares. That's what makes this feel like Greek tragedy. We happened because he was trying to defend his family, to defend you. If he were evil and we could hate him this would be so much easier. What is that juice, anyway? I can identify the others but the color is too common and I've run out of traditional juices that it could be."

The human brain liked novelty. It was an outgrowth of curiosity, the need to analyze new aspect of one's environment. That meant that a new thing could cause more 'this is good' chemicals than an old favorite, and since depression destroyed those chemicals the more the better. Roll had sent five glasses of different juices instead of just a jug. That was good not only because different fruits had different nutrients and having everything in glasses made the amount he'd drunk clearly visible but it made him more likely to drink. Which he did, eyebrows rising as he admitted, "I have no idea." He drank a little more. Yes, hitting the curiosity instinct seemed to work wonderfully with scientists.

"Psychiatry."

"Hmm?" That was out of the blue, although they'd been talking about it. What about the word? It sounded like Blues had made up his mind about something.

"We're going to need to do research on it for our own sakes. It's a practical necessity because we want to be able to get along with you, and you're not realizing how important it is even though 'the proper study of man is man' has been a truism for ages. We need to do it anyway, we have an outside perspective, so we might as well share the results. You're not stupid, as a species. Unless your brains go rogue on you. Antibiotic-eating bacteria, ethnic relations, wars: you can handle all those things provided you can think clearly. The problem is it's very hard to take care of something that makes one of those old punch card supercomputers with vacuum tubes look simple without a manual. The fact that it's good at making very complex calculations like what to wear in the morning, compared to which the calculus equations and physics principles involved in playing catch are nothing, look like a snap makes you think it's that simple. It's not. There's one hell of a lot being included in the decisions your brain makes about what to feel about things that you don't even have the ability to look over, let alone veto."

His father had recently been made well aware that, but only as it applied to a malfunctioning brain. The ones in working order still had huge bugs. "You can take an instant dislike to someone who you'd otherwise like before they even say a word because they just came from the animal shelter, you were injured by a very scared dog as a child, and they smell a bit like one. All this without your conscious mind even being aware that this repressed memory has been brought up, let alone allowed to control eighty percent of the vote in a judgment call. If someone were to tell you about the memory, you'd think they were on drugs, and say that you'd gotten along fine with people who owned dogs. The key there is those weren't _scared _dogs. You can smell the difference: you just aren't consciously aware of it. The same way most people have no idea the advent of modern hygiene has not only weakened your immune systems dangerously because you don't get exposed to enough germs as children to give the system an accurate threat profile while it's developing but caused you to become allergic to your own species' pheromones. Yes, the sexual ones. No, I'm not kidding. You're not getting exposed to enough of them during the key period because people wash them off and after that your body's response to something unidentified trying to mess with it is not a happy one. 'Body odor' used to be an attractive thing, within reason. Now the scents that are supposed to turn you on are major turnoffs."

"Ouch."

"Psychiatry. Robot masters don't do the jobs of robots for them. They feel sad if we do. We just help them figure out how and so on. If your strategy sets are this buggy we're going to be compelled to help you because we love you. If that manifests as backseat driving it's going to be hell for everyone. You hate being controlled and we can't debug you the way we can robots so we'll feel like we're failing you. We need to channel that desire to analyze systems and design strategies for optimizing them in a direction that allows you to debug some things and compensate somewhat for the hardwired things that are the equivalent of the three laws and equally annoying on an hourly basis. Then we'll actually be helping, you'll be more rational and able to solve your own problems so we won't have to resist the urge to meddle, and everyone wins. Also, a lot of our solution sets, love, heartbreak, and so on, seem to be shared ones that developed reasonably independently because they're just that good. Working from a sample of one species makes it incredibly hard to get a theory of generalized intelligence, which is probably a lot of the problem in my case. Dr. Light thought that sentience, love, and so on were not good strategies and so an evolving system, working on trial and error plus logic tests, wouldn't develop them. The issue is that you were an evolving problem-solving system, you developed them, and the reason they're considered dangerous to rationality is that you don't know how to handle them and they're very, very good strategy sets. Theory of thought has, no offense, about hit the pike-and-musket technology level of effectiveness. Love's a bit of a strategic nuclear weapon compared to most people's conscious-level weapons for dealing with problems. You don't really know how it works or how to handle it, you just know that it makes things happen really dramatically, really unpredictably, and really fast if the buttons get pushed right and it goes off. Often aimed in the wrong direction." As witness the explosive ending of their pseudo-family.

He couldn't argue with that.

'That's the real problem. Deliberately hitting subconscious triggers is unethical if you don't know they're there and can't check to see if they're interfering with rationality. Luckily, since it is the real problem, I think that I can rule out our side of the two things that can go wrong. We like having a target too, it seems, this is the right one, so it's far more attractive than running around cleaning up after you. Aside from Shadowman's efforts, though, we'd better stay out of the medication side. They know enough to know that fiddling with the chemicals there does things that they can't control, and they're going to be very suspicious of things we provide that claim to make them think more clearly. Especially what with the epic witch-doctor nonsense that was the early psychiatric profession. Lobotomies, lithium, electroshock... they help some, sure, but they're worse than useless if you start doing them to everyone just because they're the only things that have been shown to have any positive effect on anyone."

"Electroshock _helps_?"

"Someone noticed that some depressed people actually were feeling _better_ after seizures, which is very counterintuitive as those are horrible experiences. Electroshock is meant to safely simulate a seizure. It's a bit like when an old computer was frozen and you'd hit the reset button. You could lose data, but it was often working a lot better once it turns back on. The brain uses both electric and chemical signals, and depression hits the chemical side but apparently this can straighten things out a bit. There are various theories as to the details of why. It's fantastic when it works and there aren't side effects, but worse than useless in most cases. Sometimes the memory problems are bad enough that the health improvement isn't worth it. Can't use it for you, so don't get your hopes up. If it weren't for the fact it would be actively harmful for you they would have tried it before you were allowed to come here."

His father had been in a maximum security asylum for the criminally insane. Thank _goodness _they hadn't put him in an ordinary prison as they had through records of the condition and he'd been covered by the (non-temporary) insanity defense. Sick people got taken care of, although the professionalism could have been better.

"I will find a way to help you, and the fact that this comes in under my job description instead of it being… unprofessional to focus too much on a family member when I'm currently the most intelligent of my kind and that effectively means overall coordinator by default. This way I don't have to pick between feeling guilty about not doing my duty as your son and not doing my duty as…I need to work on titles. No, I need to delegate that. Possibly to Roll. 'Miss' was a good idea. Not Rock. Period. Robot king? I don't want that job, the one I already have is bad enough."

He smiled, glad he'd made his father laugh. "It's wonderful to talk like this. Although it's mostly been me talking at you, sorry."

"No, I'm glad. You weren't able to talk to me for too long, then you died, then you came back and… It's wonderful to see how you've grown. Go on, please."

"My job is mostly attempting to perfect my understanding of the universe so I can make good judgment calls, identifying problems, delegating them to someone if robot masterly possibly, doing analysis on things, calling for votes, running around doing checks on people's programming… I don't know if there's a title that covers 'wise old man on mountaintop,' 'professional pessimist,' 'personnel manager,' 'editorial writer,' 'chairman,' 'family doctor'… Person who does whatever comes up. Ombudsman? Handyman? Why do these things all end in –man?"

"If you pick Chairman, I could find some more of the material I made Woodman from."

Now it was Blues' turn to laugh. "Chairman of the Board? Well, manager is a work title but we're not a company. Light Robotics is, we're not. Money's just a means of making value conversion calculations easier. For instance, someone is really, really hungry then they might be willing to pay a hundred dollars for a loaf of bread if they had to. To a producer who made tons of it, it cost five cents to make. If he sells it for a dollar to the hungry person, then he made ninety-five cents of profit and the hungry person made ninety-nine dollars of profit in that transaction. That's what trade is, people exchanging something they don't want all that much for something they want more with something who feels the other way around about the goods in question. We can do the exact math in our heads. Also, it's better to give out more than you get. The principle is called 'buying insurance.' If people owe you then they'll return the favor if you ever need it. If they don't like you because you're a penny-pincher then they'll watch and laugh if you find yourself in need of money. With people you don't trust to return favors you need to get what you can out of a single transaction. If you build up mutual trust, then you have backup if needed and if they need backup you will be informed of it so that you can protect your investment. 'Unselfishness' is the optimum long-term strategy."

The 'fairy tale' genre contained a lot of simplified cause and effect demonstrations of this, but more relevantly, "If Rock were a jerk he'd be dead, but I had people he'd blown up asking me not to hurt him! I need to study this kid's tactics. My models were, well…" Albert's kindness had gotten him love and protection, you had to give Dr. Light that, just aimed in the wrong direction. "He's a nice person. People know they can trust him. That means he's a stable investment. War is one thing, but outside of that most of them would put in considerable effort to keep him alive because he'd thoroughly demonstrated he'd do the same. Not even the same in return. He's violated the third law like crazy to minimally harm people who were shooting at him in two wars now. That was sticking his neck out in a big way which means it's a very big sign of good faith."

"Game theory, correct?"

"You know the demonstration?"

"Two people attempting to take advantage of each other making an exchange earns one point, since they're not making a large investment so as not to put themselves at risk. Two people who do extend trust get three points, since they're taking the risk of putting more into it and that means getting more out of it. If one person extends trust and the other takes advantage of it, then the swindler makes out like a bandit… but then is not trusted again, at least not easily, meaning people don't want to exchange with them and they're not going to get much from it when they do once the supply of 'suckers' runs out. Over a few exchanges, the people who offer trust and deal fairly win."

"Not as simple in the real world, but the issue is the same. Trust is the optimal strategy: who do you trust? They know they can trust Rock. Rock who can be negotiated with and is not an enemy, opponent or not, versus Gamma, who will try to hurt them? No contest. They were thinking about throwing the next war at one point to make Gamma look bad and Rock look good, actually. We were brainstorming, but that would be worth the investment. If we were going on with the wars, that is."

"I'm glad we're not."

Blues nodded solemnly. Silence for a moment, and that worked better than using words to express this, the reaction verified. "Anyway, the problems are both sets of instincts. Give us a target and we're fine. Since that target is getting you guys a handle on yours that should work on both our races, although the effectiveness of this strategy will need to be monitored and we should work on a couple of other angles, since it's that important. The problem is that extending trust is not safe, period. It's a calculated gamble and you are leaving yourself open to whatever degree of width. Rock brought up that both attempts at security blankets, the laws and Gamma, were worse than useless. Essentially because they were going in with mistrust and hoping to keep us from hurting them, and that's calculated to not make us happy since their defensive measures caused us to take a massive hit in the first few transactions, as in the experiment. Humans have laws to create penalties for swindling and so on and make extending trust safer, since having an economy without trust is like having a can without a can opener. A neutral third party would be nice, but I've got too many things going to play around with the android idea right now."

"Android?"

"I was thinking about how to use nanites to get around the reprogramming problem, and the issue there is that setting up nanites for that effectively means robot master types would be almost useless. Robot-level intelligences could evolve on their own safely, or mostly safely, if you incorporated the mechanisms you'd need for programming defense into them, and given psychic integrity any programming corrections made in a sentient would be automatically erased even if they wanted them there. You'd have to find a way to bypass the defense mechanisms to do our work, and why bother putting in defense mechanisms if everyone knows how to bypass them? Androids could use our wireless setup as a telephone service, but they wouldn't be able to be… telepathic? We like sharing headspace. It's a shortcut to knowing the other person, meaning you can trust them, which is a huge advantage, we can grab people to check our work if we think we've got an error somewhere… We're network managers. We like networking. You wouldn't believe the gossip chain. I set up an all-master network since I can do that sort of thing. The others could only connect to their robots since links either have to be through someone of a higher level or via a shared robot. We don't share robots with strangers since they're our robots and we are_ so_ not going to let someone we don't know mess around with their cute little heads, so it's hard for two same-levels to connect. Well, robot masters. If there was another one on my level… Rock would let them link because he's trusting like that and then I'd essentially have to link to make sure they weren't going to hurt him. He considers Dr. Light… not the same thing as me, but equivalent relationship types. It's a bit like Roll. Well, no. To Roll, her father comes first. She's on his side. To Rock, he is flat-out not going to pick favorites or sides. If he could only work with one of us, then he'd pick Dr. Light in a heartbeat since he needs the help more. I'm going to have to come to some sort of working agreement with my murderer for the sake of the children. Probably a good thing in the long run."

That didn't mean he was happy about it. "Do you remember… of course you remember, but the point Roll made. You're their brother, or origin, as a robot master and Dr. Light's their father. So he's family through them regardless of if you ever are allowed to be Thomas' son."

"And you through me. How would they describe this relationship? It feels like an unholy combination of stepsomething and in-laws. And adoptive versus biological or logical parents versus whatever they want to call 'the people who had you genetically or robotically engineered.' I know there are some people who take a donor egg, a donor sperm, and a surrogate mother and consider the result the child they've wanted all their lives when they could have just adopted. Is there a term for that?"

"…Eccentric?" The word insane was too rude and too pointed.

"You and Dr. Light essentially built my body and set up the recursive ai and so on that eventually ended up with my sentient self. Then Dr. Light took my programming code, mostly self-written and I doubt I can get any money from the patents he took out on things I created myself for myself, but never mind," old annoyance and there were greater ones, "drastically simplified the fact-checking procedures and stuck it on a much smaller system. To be fair, mine was incredibly expensive since I needed the space as a non-sentient to run the calculations I used to get sentient and what would someone at a human level do with all that brainpower? In any case, the combination of less through analysis and smaller system to do it on ended up with intelligences in the same ballpark as humans. They can get larger databases, live longer, and over time they'll get better and better at problem solving once they have experience, but at the moment someone that was built yesterday can pass for a rather bright but naïve human adult. Rock passes for a very dedicated child, which amazingly is the truth. That takes talent and experience."

"I'm starting to get more of an understanding of why you're so impressed by him."

"I'm so proud."

"If I'm related to him through you would that be considered grandson, then?" Someone was being a doting father, and it was bringing back memories of how amazed he'd been by Blues' exceeding of all expectations.

"You're old enough to be a grandfather. He called you Uncle because he thinks of me as yet another brother, but I am of the previous design generation. Prototype, after all. I don't know about being called father." That was a title that carried so much weight. "He thinks we're closer to social animals in the sense of the term used for ants and bees than a human setup. Possibly because of having to go through so many hives past the workerbots defending their master. Oh, about androids, they're going to be a bit more like Rock than most robot masters. Rock had never linked until I altered him so that he could link to Rush earlier. I'm wondering if his social networking was somewhat of a sublimation of the desire to network to robots. He had that need to understand and care for others, but had to find another channel. Roll includes Dr. Light in those she cares for, and that means understanding him so she'll do a good job, but Rock's the master at it."

"Did that have something to do with…" You letting him in to make changes?

"I showed him how to link to Rush, and he… I gathered data from watching him that verified that it was a good idea to allow him to assist in optimizing my own interaction strategic structure. He's amazing. It's a little hard to translate without it being cliché, but if we were superheroes his power would be superhuman niceness. Sure, he can shoot energy blasts and so on, but that's almost not worth mentioning. If he'd tried to make me see the light, no pun intended, by force I would have taken him apart. He makes you want to do things for him because he wants to do things for you. It's not conditional: if it were then it wouldn't work. He's a love electro-magnet. I am in awe. Sadly I'm too cynical to use his strategic set, but I am in awe. It's even a strategy that covers the main weakness of the strategy. The fact so many people like him because he's nice means that if someone were to try to abuse his niceness they'd get… actually, he wouldn't let us kill them. Because he's nice like that. Which would quite possibly end up with them owing him one and ending up liking him because of it. This ability of his confused many because he should just be an irritating sap and they should hate him because he's an enemy but they still found themselves liking him. I suppose the fact that he's, well, he's an innocent cute little kid who is trying to do his best to help everyone and we're robot masters. We were built to take care of robots like that. It's a little hard to fight someone when every time you land a hit you have to resist the urge to go see if he's okay, do repairs, wipe the tears off his face and metaphorically give him a lollypop for being a good boy. You knew why you weren't winning. You had an army of doctors. Scratch that, pediatricians. You can remove the repair protocols from the robot master but you can't remove the robot master from the repair protocols."


	6. Reason's Rhythm

"I know. I know. You wouldn't believe how hard it is to work around that. Even if they truly believe that it's for a good cause, even if they give consent to try to get rid of all their aversions to it and the first law is the least of it, even if they're very angry at humanity and the world, even if they're a bit of a jerk as a person, it's still there. Trying to get rid of it… is like Dr. Light's attempts to make you stop feeling love. Simply not going to work."

"They'll get around the roadblocks eventually. We were designed to do stuff like that. Regular robots couldn't figure out what to do if there was a door between them and the kitchen that they weren't programmed to deal with." Was this a sudden subject change or back on topic? "When this is over I am going through every single line of his code, every single edit, every single memory until I find out what went so right with that kid. We need more people like that. It could just be that he had a supportive environment and didn't have his head messed around with. I'd like to think that we're like that naturally. I hope that it's not a byproduct of not letting him link the normal way. Doing that to a kid… Well, pressure forces people to grow, but that's just wrong. For us. For an android who wouldn't know what they were missing because it's not something that's meant for them?" Blues groaned. "No. _Not_ doing thought experiments about how androids with our logic system but humanity's lack of mental connection would be as a race. No. I've got two races to deal with already."

"I thought something like this might be an issue. I'm not the AI expert, but in a sentient being your programming is very… open ended."

"I know. I want to understand _everything_ and it's hard to prioritize when there are this many important issues involved in what I care about. Figuring out how to manage power plants and robots is easy. They're designed to be simple and the more you simplify the better. People are complicated and simplifying your model is a not a good idea. They call that stereotyping, among other things." The tray was almost gone, 80 percent consumption reached well ahead of a linear projection. His father's appetite was returning, which meant that he was succeeding in giving his father something to live for. In making him happy. He was glad that he could smile about that.

"Hmm?" What was Blues thinking about, that had made him smile while talking about such a difficulty?

"You're feeling better."

Albert blinked, not sure what Blues was talking about. "Well, it's nice to talk to you."

"Yes. It's having a measurable effect on your condition. Already. I'm glad."

He hadn't picked up on it, but his father was glad that Blues felt that he was helping and was happy about it. "That's nice. Will you… If there's going to be diplomacy, then obviously I'm staying here and not becoming a fugitive. Do you…" Will you be staying?

"I can work from anywhere. When I was having this body built I improved it a few hundred percent over the first one. It's not that it wasn't a good design, just obsolete and without armor. I go away for two years and the chips are smaller, the alloys are better… I borrowed a copy of Shadowman's design with his unique systems removed to make room for the amount of drive space I need and went on a bit of a crime spree. Oh, I got everything on your wish list, although a lot of that's redundant now. Oh, and I already undid the tampering with the robot masters in charge of the crystal mines. Well… Except for the upgrades. Knockoffs. I had to rebuild them from the ground up. Horrible quality. Dr. Light's suing the builders, by the way. On the one hand, it's really useful technology and monopolies are bad. On the other, every single robot master is derived from my program code and he has that copyrighted. Given that the company's international and China has never cared about intellectual property laws that's getting very, very complicated. Especially since a lot of the court precedents he set taking control away from you are being used against him, which is karma but not that good for people like the mine masters. That he's licensing it to people like Dr. Cossack is helping, but I don't know if it'll work. Well, it should hopefully be a non-issue anyway."

"I know, I was keeping track of this."

"Sorry."

"No, it's interesting to hear your perspective. Once you become considered people, that's a moot point hopefully. Although human slavery is still not a thing of the past."

"It's easier to get forgiveness than permission. I know where every copy of my mind, no matter how edited, is. We steal and/or destroy the files and we rescue the slaves. Sort of Underground Railroad, only without the sneaking around. We just need a safe place to put them. Sadly, Canada's not an option." The more extreme an environment, the more robot masters were needed, and Canada had no Dr. Cossack. "Not the moon. That's rubbing it in too much. Although, there is a fantastic view. If we're doing tourism that's one of the first things that should be set up. We could probably convert the mine over. That region got trashed, but since it already is then we could use it as the 'city' area. Whoever ends up running that needs to mark paths and roads. Having footprints and tracks everywhere would ruin the place, but bouncing around like the first ones up there and… It's an experience. It's grey, the gravity is as close to flying as swimming is, although from the other end of things, it's vast, and you might feel like the universe was cold, empty, unreal, silent, without anything to latch on to, but then you look up."

"I know. It's very…" He tried to find words until Blues took pity on him.

"It's _very_. I think trying to describe it to someone who hasn't been there is like trying to explain blue to a blind person or networking to a human. You can use metaphor to try to get the feeling of it across, but a smile is not the same thing as sunrise."

"I think the best metaphor I can come up with is the Grand Canyon. When I heard about it I thought, what's so special about a gorge? I'd been to a lot of retreat and convention sites. Lia, the person I was dating at the time, dragged me there and I was actually glad she did. Most parks and so on are a bit… Yes, they're very nice trees. Now what? The Grand Canyon, on the other hand, I rearranged our tour schedule to show you." When they'd been showing off Blues to potential investors.

"I remember." Dr. Light had agreed because Albert said he wanted to see it again and having Blues along on a hike was okay if it was a demonstration, so they'd ended up with a dozen investors, and he'd been encouraged to interact and show off social skills, and climbing around on rocks showed motor skills, and he'd even been allowed to get dirty and muddy a bit, examining things, because that showed that he wouldn't break down easily. Dr. Light had been kept busy by the ones who just wanted to talk business and the people who were here because their spouses or co-workers had wanted to grab this opportunity to put a camping trip in the Grand Canyon on the expense account or tax write off.

He couldn't eat but making s'mores was still fun. Songs were wonderful. He didn't sleep, so he was allowed to sit someplace outside in the campground and look at all the things he could see there. He'd had some nice conversations, three of them, about river rafting, the Sierra Club and bird watching (he knew thousands of calls and he'd helped a very nice lady identify the second to last thing on her regional checklist). "I wish it had been more than three days. I've gone hiking a few times with Woodman and so on, but not anywhere we could be spotted. You know, I_ have_ to take Rock camping."

"I wish that trip had been longer too."

"Of course I'll go camping with you! I just have to wait until you're free and healthy. Don't worry, I'll… forget photos, I'll bring a robot with a webcam." That way he could see them and they him, as well as talk.

"As good at problem solving as ever, I see." That grin…

"A lot better, actually." He hadn't been able to solve the most important problem, back then. "Or I hope so."

"You seemed almost starved, back then. You would chatter endlessly at first, whys and everything that ran though your head that you could fit into words so much slower than your thoughts. Once you noticed he didn't like it, it was very hard, wasn't it? You wanted to talk to him, and you were supposed to let him know how you were, but he didn't want to listen. When he put the limits in to keep you from talking at inappropriate times about useless subjects," ha, "your eyes were… then he limited that. I don't know if it's just I was there and watched you learn, that I knew you and knew what you had to be feeling, but I know why he got those sunglasses when I dragged my feet about the redesign he wanted, limiting the range of motion of your facial features. Maybe I should have. If I had, then fixing that would just mean reinstalling your original face. That would have been better than him tampering with your mind."

"I'm glad you didn't. It was passive resistance, but you were still sticking up for me, and that let me know that you thought this was wrong and if you hadn't felt that way… everyone else considered me a thing and thought that I had no right to have opinions or emotions, that they were fake. Everyone but you."

"I'm sorry," that it hadn't been enough.

"I'm sorry too. All of that was… worth mourning about. Sometimes, though, all it takes is one person. When you're alone and no one supports you then you think they're right, but if someone is as by your side as they can be, at least, then that means an amazing amount."

"I'm glad I was able to do that for you even if nothing else."

"I think you really do need your memory refreshed. You did a lot. This scarf, I… he wasn't letting me wear it in the lab, or really anytime you weren't there, and I'm glad actually because that's why it survived. And you kept it." He touched it, even though he only had pressure receptors through the glove: sensitive armor was a bad idea.

"You needed something cheerful."

"And he wouldn't have allowed a stuffed animal. This was concealing me, like the sunglasses, but it was also protecting me. Necks are a vulnerable place in both of us, you know. It's just fabric, but that it's trying to protect means a lot."

"I'm glad the thought counted."

"It did."

Glancing at the tray in a way meant to draw Blues' attention to it, as though he wasn't already tracking the progress closely, Albert informed him that there were, "Three more things. What time is it?"

"3:32:15 as of _now_."

"Oh. Did I really eat all that?"

"All that? Do I want to know… No, I don't. But please, Father, try to finish your meals from now on. Have you had anything besides this today? Other than tea."

The silence answered that question.

He had to leave his seat to hug him, so he did that as his father ate the kiwi slices. Blues wondered if Roll had gone to extra trouble on the presentation to make up for things or if that sort of intricate arrangement was her default.

"Do you want to stay out here? I could go put the tray back and get you another coat." He still wore the grass-stained one.

"I can…"

"I want to do it for you. I left you alone way too long, and it's a thing we have. Like how Roll's cleaning bots feel unwanted if people pick up after themselves. They want to make the family's lives easier by helping them so they have time for other things, so if do it themselves then… We could go into the family room, but I'd like to get you another coat first."

"Roll wouldn't be happy that her orders were disobeyed." A wry smile. "I suppose. I don't like the idea of you being a servant, of you being treated as slaves."

"Slaves don't have a choice. Helping someone because you're forced to is wrong. Helping someone because you love them is entirely different."

"I suppose I want to make sure it's the second one."

"It is. I'll keep an eye on you, and if I need to I'll teleport back." Teleporting to the room and back would be rude. The technology hadn't existed when he died and now there were rules on when and where you were allowed to use it? Already? Well, most of them were practical. Going into someone's room unannounced had always been rude, for one thing, it used up a lot of energy that had to come from somewhere, and no doing it without the permission of the master within a master's territory. That last one meant teleport shields wouldn't be a problem. Also, no rubbing things they can't do in humans' faces covered teleportation. That one wasn't new.

"You don't need to fuss over me that much."

"It's one of those I'm worried because I care things. No, they're not going to send troops in to haul you away from here, not without me knowing about it in advance at least, and it's a warm day so that's not an issue, but still." He worried.

"Well, I suppose that way the sooner you leave the sooner you get back." It shouldn't take more than five minutes even in this complex. Blues was aware he was being paranoid about this, but leaving his father alone could send the wrong message and he didn't want to do that.

"I'll be right back."

No running was almost certainly a rule in this house, at least for him, so he kept to a reasonable pace. If he looked rushed and urgent, then given his stoic façade (the mask that had been placed on him) people would wonder where the fire was.

He picked the route to the guest room that did not go through the family room. There were a variety of guest rooms in the complex. This one had probably involved some careful thought. It was close to the family area but not quite in it. Next door, really. An invitation but still some separation, or privacy, or both. There were family area guest suites: Thomas had been a single trophy child and his parents had died in a skydiving accident before Albert met him, but he had second cousins that were tolerable. The college and other friends had been more Albert's friends than his and whether they considered him responsible for what happened to him or another victim once it had happened they had lost the tie that bound them to him.

Blues wouldn't sleep here, but Roll would probably feel obligated to give him a room if he was staying and he would be obligated to make some use of it so as not to demonstrate even further disrespect for her right to arrange matters in her territory. He wondered what one she would pick: he had the plans on file and there were a few options.

Nonverbal signals? Those of humans he needed to decipher. Where she 'filed' him, what place she considered optimal for him? That would be read loud and clear.

He gave the tray to a passing bot (actually putting it back in the kitchen instead of giving it to the first one that stopped and wanted to take it would have made them sad, after all), and told it via text message, not link, that they were done eating and they would come to the family room once he got another coat. Their conversation hadn't been monitored, so he had better keep her informed so she didn't regret giving him that courtesy if he wanted to retain it.

He could, after all, kill her father in a heartbeat. The first law was really only another reason to set up a means of doing it without his programming stopping him. The fact that the robot hadn't been waiting at the door and didn't follow him was a very significant olive branch, a peace offering. A much larger one than the tray. The tray was her duty to guests but this was taking a significant risk with the security of the household she guarded and the family she loved. He had better show that he appreciated it: she was unhappy with him enough as it was.

One of the things about this position was that he had robot masters contacting him almost constantly. He was holding the secure database and they needed to get information from it and add to it, if nothing else. He hadn't heard anything from 'the twins' since they'd split up. Actually, he'd never heard from them, since Rock hadn't known Blues was alive except when he was right there and Roll had been _not speaking to him_. He'd been juggling a few too many things at once when he felt Rock's ID asking for permission to talk to him, so he'd actually stopped moving for a moment as his area mapping section and a few others had to be tasked to deal with the surprise and the thoughts that followed it.

Of course he was willing to talk to Rock. "It's good to hear from you."

"I thought so! This worked with Rush, and Roll said I should be able to do it to you."

"You didn't even… Sorry. Yes, you have links with those you care for and those who care for you, those are a necessity. If you want, I can set up optional links between you and others, although Roll hasn't given me permission to consider her in my care so I don't have the authorization to link her to anyone."

"Oh. How are you?"

"Did Roll pass on the message I left with one of hers?"

"Yes, but it was what you were doing, not how you were feeling."

"I'm happy." He could say that now. "He's doing a bit better already. Do you want to go camping anytime soon?"

"Camping?" Definite excitement there.

"It sounds like you do. Where would you like to go? I'd like to do it overnight, so at least two days. And we need to bring at least one human. Do you know anyone who like roasted marshmallows and s'mores? I want to show you how to make them and we need someone to eat them."

"I don't know, I've never been camping."

"Rock, it's more fun if there are more people there. Don't worry: I do want to spend time that's just the two of us. There are lots of things to do in the wilderness, so the people that come can split up without anyone feeling left out."

"Oh, okay. Um, I'll ask Roll, and can Dr. Light come?"

"If we do it anytime soon my father will have to attend via webcam, but if I'm bringing mine then of course you can bring yours. I know Gutsman likes camping, and Woodman does too." Gutsman was one of the kidnapped and recovered Lightbots. "I haven't asked them yet, but if you want them to come I'm sure they'd be happy to."

He felt Rock ask for a more real link, not just words but sharing, and of course granted it. Warm happy child. He gently kept him away from the memories that might hurt him, but otherwise he was very welcome here.

"How many people do you think would be good?"

"Well, if we're going to be splitting up we need people to have company that they want to split up with. The two of us, the nature lovers, hmm. Your father might want to stay back at camp sometimes but if we want to try to get our fathers to talk then we need someone for Roll to talk to. Does she like nature?"

"She likes flowers. I don't know if she likes the rest of it. Gardening's really unpredictable and it gets on her nerves when we get a sudden frost and stuff like that."

"She's a robot master: of course she's a control freak. Yes, you are one too. It's just that what makes people happy is unpredictable so you are used to redrawing plans on the fly. You still really want them to be happy and she really wants to have a nice garden for everyone to enjoy. Of course it's frustrating when that doesn't happen after you put in so much effort."

Oh.

"I should probably let her be in charge of the camp. Hmm. I suppose we could disguise Woodman so we can invite outsiders and they won't know he's a Wilybot. The problem is that if they really don't like my father that will be awkward. I think we need another human and someone for Roll to talk to… Hmm."

"Hmm?"

"I could see about Dr. Cossack and his daughter Kalinka, but if they come than Ringman's going to want to come to oversee security since, well, at least one Wilybot will be there, two counting me, and if he got into a turf war with Roll I'd have to side with him since she's not one of mine and she's already not all that happy with me. Well, we have time to think about this. And you need to think about where you would like to go." Rock had never been camping before. He'd expected that, the files had never mentioned a camping trip. It was still sad.

"A Cossackbot is one of yours?"

"Well, I am the only… grandmaster? It's essentially me or no one, it's good to be cared for, and I wouldn't force them into anything. Roll, well… have she and your father made up?"

"He's a little angry at you for putting her in that position, but he gets why. She does too, but they're both not happy about it."

"I _am_ going to apologize, but Roll wanted me to stay out of their relationship and not try to intervene in an area where she is my superior since she knows him and I truly don't, you are right that he's not the man I knew. So I have to wait on apologizing to him until she gives me permission and probably some directions. I don't mind, I do need help figuring out how to deal with this person."

"Phew." He didn't want his sister to be without this forever. "I hope you and Roll can be friends. Can't you just let her and Ringman work it out themselves?"

"Since I'm planning the camping trip I have the final decision. I can ask them to work it out, but these are their families. If Ringman appeals to me, and he very well might since he's a policeman by profession and they tend to be practical like that and he would be very much within his rights to do this, then if it comes down to letting someone I am responsible for guard those they care for or someone who is not, I have to go with Ringman. Period. It's duty and I can't let personal feelings or nepotism come into it. I suppose I could try giving Roll camp command and Ringman security command but those are not really separate things."

"It sounds complicated."

"We'll work it out, don't worry." A quick general scan: equivalent to a hug.

"Are you whistling?"

"No, why?"

"It feels a bit like you should be. Or maybe it's just that you're really graceful, or is that the word? I kind of think in spurts when something comes up, mostly, but you are constantly and it's very graceful. Patterns, and you're really good at it, but you can go off in new directions too and it's still natural-feeling."


	7. Reason & Rhythm

His father's room was indeed very clean. Clean to the point it looked like no one was staying here. No marks of the personality his condition put at risk, no papers that weren't in the desk's drawers, no clothes that weren't in the dresser drawers or closet, no nothing, really. "I'm good at it and I like it." There was the (empty) laundry basket, here were the coats in the closet, and he was off. "I could sing if you like."

"I would, but you don't have to. It just feels like you are."

"Music and mathematics are deeply connected. Well, math is involved in everything, but especially music. And I'd love to sing for you."

Happy Rock. "Tonight, maybe? Are you going to stay?"

"I hope so, but I need to ask Roll's permission. It would be rude to invite myself over any more times than I already have… No, don't ask her for me. You're a very polite boy by human standards, but you need a few lessons on our side of it."

"Okay, but, this is Dr. Light's house. Asking Roll and not him would be ruder than having one of yours ask for you instead of doing it personally."

"You're right. I'd probably better just ask both of them at once when we get over to the family room. After apologizing. Rock, please don't ask her to forgive me. You're very hard to say no to, do you know that? I don't want to take unfair advantage of it. We're not at war anymore, and contrary to the saying being unfair at love is the best way to lose it. In war, a victory is one person winning. At love, a victory is everyone winning."

"I agree about love, but not about war."

"Yes." He pseudo-hugged him again.

"If you're staying, we could maybe camp out in my room and practice for going camping? Or you could tell me about it?"

"What do you do for fun?"

"I do things in the lab." Images: melting mettool alloy components, debugging programs manually and refining design, talking with his father about things, building prototypes… "And I play with Rush, and hang out with my family."

"Besides robot master and son-type things. Hobbies, Rock?"

"Um…" Data files.

"In other words, there isn't anything you don't like and it's hard to pick one thing to do in depth."

"Yeah."

"I could teach you campfire songs and sing for you, then, and we can talk."

"Great!"

As Rock was a fellow master, Roll had no authority over him, Rush, or Rock's room other than that which he gave her and the effects they had on the rest of the household. She could nag, but that was it. On the other hand, if Blues… Being polite didn't normally get this complicated, but he was dealing with someone he'd greatly offended and needed to stay on his toes to avoid making things worse. "If I stay here, then we could decorate my room. I've only been on this plane for a few weeks, but I've found a lot of things I want to show you. I might end up a pack rat if I'm not careful."

"You think you'll stay long enough for that?" He could feel the excited grin.

"It won't take that long to pack everything up again if I need to, so why not? Even if I'm not here for long I want to show you them. I'd like to stay until my father moves out, but who knows."

"So if he doesn't move out…"

Blues laughed both inside and in the real world. "One big happy family?"

If robot masterly possible. The will that had won the wars to bring his brothers home, stop people being hurt, and capture Dr. Wily had filed this under its highest priority set and level.

"That would be nice," Blues agreed. "Jurisdictional areas by location tied to specialty?"

"What?"

"The Roll and Ringman problem. I didn't want two camps, as that's not the point, but if I give him perimeter security plus veto power over his family's tents and Roll in-camp security in general, that works. She's best on area defense and he's a policeman. He gets sent places where there aren't defense systems. At least, not _his _defense systems. They don't have a permanent house manager. What Dr. Cossack does is have them be house and lab manager after he builds them while he does error checking and observes them in practice and so on and so forth, and when he's sure they'll be okay then they get assigned someplace. They love him for that. Most people just get turned on at the job and they have lots of theory but no practice and a lot of robots counting on them, not to mention some sort of facility to run, and it's incredibly stressful because they have no idea if they're up to it or not. They are, since we're very good at learning the ropes, but they're worried."

"What about Woodman?"

"What about him? He's a conservation bot by profession outside of wartime, like Gutsman. I don't think he'll care unless someone wanted to cut down a tree to improve line of sight or something ridiculous like that. You're not fighting with Roll over the house, right? She's your sister so you trust her to take care of your family. If the house were attacked you'd follow her orders since she'd know the best things to do. Woodman's my brother, so he'd trust me and whoever I put on security to keep him safe. When you've got security arrangements, then there are different ways to do things, and since they do different types of security Roll and Ringman's styles would clash. Woodman and Gutsman? 'Stay on the trail the animals use so you don't step on the flowers or something's nest by accident, no hunting unless it's an overpopulated species and only enough to stabilize the ecosystem, please pick as many of those as you can carry since they're an invasive non-native but leave the endangered native wildflowers alone...' Want me to let them pick out a few place for you to pick from? Gutsman's working for conservation groups, we could probably find someplace that's not just pretty but we could help out a bit. There's a conservation/exploration Cossackbot too, Diveman, but he does marine. Do you want to go look at coral reefs? Not to mention beaches."

"That would be great!"

"And it means a lot of different groups. The two of us, the doctors can talk shop, Roll and Ringman have a lot in common, not to mention we've got two sets of people who probably would like to do father-daughter bonding, not to mention father-son, Roll being there will hopefully make Kalinka feel like she's not the odd one out and they should get along well, the doctors can talk shop, and old men have to watch their diets but she's a growing girl who lives someplace it's cold and she needs extra calories to keep her body temperature up. Not to mention that she's going to be having fun hiking and swimming… I am informed that it's a bad time of year to go outside up there and she's getting a little hyper from being indoors too much. No: we're not going to have to worry about roasted marshmallows going to waste."

"So we can do it?"

"I don't see why not. I'll ask your family, then if they say yes I'll start giving out invitations and assignments. I don't think we'll need hunting licenses, although maybe export ones. Dr. Cossack's not a vegetarian but he's very anti-animal cruelty, and we don't need to eat. It's a good thing the American National Parks aren't in need of conservation bots…"

"Why is that?"

"A lot of their wilderness areas are near places where people raise livestock or places that are heavily populated. That means that predators are a problem. California has a good park system, thank goodness, because they have a unique fire-based ecosystem called chaparral that can't compete with non-native species without regular wildfires and a large population. That means they have to balance enough fires to keep the parks healthy and keep the tinder from piling up with not burning down houses. Would you believe they have plants that spontaneously combust? 'Tierra del Fuego' or land of fire was what Spanish sailors nicknamed it because when their ships drove by during the season for it there were _always_ fires. There's enough dry tinder produced to have a nice fire that's hot enough to germinate seeds and adjust soil pH but not hot enough to damage the trees produced every year. Then some idiot introduced Eucalyptus trees from Australia since they like the climate, almost everything does, and they grow like crazy with enough water. They were meant for railroad ties but the wood's useless for that. They look pretty and do well, so people liked them, the problem is they have high-pressure sap and will explode if they catch fire."

"Really?"

"Really. Not to mention that since they have an outdoors culture since they have the climate for it and they didn't kill off the native predators they have to keep an eye on the cougars because they'll eat humans. Since there are humans in their environment all the time and they don't use guns or do anything scary they get classified as a prey species. Easy prey. That's one side of the predator problem. The other half is that the parks that weren't set up early enough were near ranching areas and that meant people had to get rid of the wolves and so on, because why catch deer when sheep are slower? That means that there's nothing there to eat the deer. So, they get overpopulated because they evolved with predators there to keep their numbers steady, and that means they will eat everything, doing incredible damage to the forest, and then start starving to death, which is also perfect conditions for disease, if nothing takes up the slack. So the rangers look at the ecological balance and issue permits to hunt an exact amount and type of deer and other species. So you've got two types of conservationists there: the 'hunting is murder' ones and the 'rednecks' who actually spend time in the wilderness and have a very good idea of what would happen if humans weren't taking up the slack of the predators they eliminated."

"Dr. Light said you went camping once. Is that how you know about this?"

"There was a Sierra Club member who came along. It's very interesting. The two types really don't get along. For one thing, when the 'city folk' go playing ecotourist they don't know how. They don't clean up their camps properly and they often try to chat up the 'locals' who have often come to the wilderness to enjoy the feeling of being part of nature and get away from the artificial environment of cities. A lot of people live in Wyoming and so on because they can't stand being surrounded by overdeveloped consumer culture. Having someone set up camp only a quarter mile away from you, the equivalent of the other side of a really thin apartment wall in areas with that little noise pollution? When you want peace, quiet, and solitude that is incredibly inconsiderate. The regulars know that you have to ask permission to do that and it's rarely granted but tourists will not only not ask but ignore every signal to go away and stop scaring the birds away with NPR and city-volume small talk that isn't outright rude. Then they get treated like someone who wants to cut down the forests they love by people who disrupt the local wildlife, trample on plants, and barely make an effort to not leave trash behind because they actually contribute to the local ecosystem. It drives them up the wall."

"That's sad."

"Yeah. They often set up that close because they want to learn, too, but that doesn't help if they're not listening for anything but how to start a fire and set up a tent because they think they know how to be environmentally friendly better than the people who spend a lot of time in the environment. We'll be going somewhere in the middle of nowhere anyway, to avoid people like that finding us and not going away because they're tourists and feel the right to stare or poke at everything in sight. Jungles are pretty loud, but pay attention to the ambient noise level. A speaking volume in a jungle or city is a shouting volume in a lot of forests and low-noise areas. If they hear a weird loud animal noise the wildlife tends to think it's a roar or scream and vacate the area so they don't get eaten. Because of how noise carries, try to find a different valley if someone is also in the area. That way hopefully the sound will be deflected. If you can hear your group from another group's camp and it's louder than the ambient forest noise, then unless they've given permission you're too close. Well, in the real places anyway. The popular campgrounds are packed with 'city folk' who don't know the rules and don't know what they're missing." He laughed again. "Sorry. It's the entire 'give data and guidance' thing. Also, I really want to be out there and showing you this for real."

"That's okay, I like hearing about it. Before, you were… not having fun. This makes you happy, and I want to get to know you and what you like."

"You're doing data gathering for tactical optimization via an activity that also advances the primary objective? I am in awe of your strategy sets, I really am."

That took a moment for Rock to process. "I want to make you happy, you seem like you really need someone to share the things you love with because for a long time you were alone and when you came back you couldn't talk about love in general because of the blocks, and if I know what you like then I can find things we both like to do and we can have fun together?"

"Very good translation, although I was talking in more general terms." Clever child. "I have so much I want to tell my father about, but there's a lot he's not capable of understanding as a human and he doesn't have the time or the high-level functioning now to learn to understand a lot of the things I was looking forward to telling him about when I came back. On the one hand, he wants to listen to me because he wasn't able to do that for a long time and he wants to see me be happy and finally able to share. On the other, he has things he needs to talk about, things that are painful for both of us. We don't want to waste our time on them, but we need to if we're going to be able to really enjoy the time we have. I've been… Saying things for him, sometimes, and looking at his reactions. If someone else agrees with you on their own then you feel like you have a right to feel that way about something. Remember when he was talking about science fiction?"

"I know. He's just so hesitant about everything else, but then it was like Amaterasu coming out of the cave." The Japanese sun goddess had gone into the Heavenly Cave after her brother had gotten drunk and done a lot of horrible things, including killing her handmaidens, and slammed it shut behind her with a giant rock. Everything had started dying without her light but she just didn't care anymore. The others hadn't done anything to stop him, after all. They'd tried to get her to come out, but nothing worked until the goddess of fun started drumming on an upside-down washtub and doing a very hot dance at the same time. Ame-no-Uzume would probably have legions of devoted worshippers if she'd been thought up in the Caribbean. He knew her traditional garb but she really seemed like she belonged in something more Jamaican. Anyway, all the clapping, cheering, laughing, and whatever the kami equivalent of the wolf-whistle was had made Amaterasu wonder what was going on, and eventually curiosity and the fact she did want something to live for even though everything had been ruined made her poke her head out to find out what was going on.

They'd told her they were celebrating a new goddess and showed her a mirror when she'd asked who it was. They word she'd said then was both a physical description of herself 'white face' and 'fascinating.' While she was hypnotized by the fact that maybe she had some value in herself even though she'd failed to protect her lands and people they locked her out of the cave and then dragged her over to the party.

She'd been cheered up, the world had been saved, and she'd gotten a bow in case that jerk even_ looked_ like he was going to do that again.

"That's a nice metaphor."

"I don't know much about literature, but I have information on religions." So since they liked talking about that sort of thing he'd try to contribute.

"If you want I can recommend some things that are public domain. Let me know what sort of stuff you like. I owe you back-birthday and holiday gifts, after all." The ones he hadn't been there for.

"Sure!"

"Humans have a two-hemisphered brain, and because diversity of thought is very important you sometimes get people that developed a lot of connections on one side and not so many on the other. One side tends to do more linear thought and the other is better at pulling various things together. Dr. Light's linear biased to the point he avoids books because they're hard for him that most humans would consider a breeze compared to algebra, let alone multivariable calculus. You can actually see that if you look at brain activity. The better they are at something the more efficient they are at it, which means the area with the least activity is often their strong point. If someone who wasn't good at science were trying to read Dr. Light's notes their neurons would be working like crazy trying to analyze it, while he's been there, thought that, and has preset pathways. Teleportation damaged my father's pathways, which means the human equivalent of programs he customized to handle very important things have been erased. So his brain was going crazy trying to call subroutines that just aren't there anymore and figure out what was going on. They're supposed to be there, so he keeps trying to use them, and since these are the ones he relied on he's having to program new subroutines from scratch. The older the human brain the less it makes new connections, especially when the neurons are as unhealthy as his are. How would you feel if Dr. Light was in danger and your motor control functions were not responding? You'd be desperate to get them to work so you could save him, desperate enough that if you had to fry your processor doing it you wouldn't care."

He could feel Rock's agreement, his sympathy.

"The medicine keeps his mood stable, but that means he can't access emergency subroutines. If he feels desperate enough, obsessed enough, then his brain will work harder. Have you heard the story about how their life can flash before someone's eyes if they're about to die, or how their senses can become so acute that they notice everything around them in amazing detail, or time slows down to the point a second feels like a minute? That's their brain going into overdrive analyzing past experience and present circumstances to try to find a way to survive. Without the medication, then the fear that what happened to me would happen to others and the horror of what it felt like to not be able to rely on his own mind plus the chemical and bioelectric chaos set off a 'level ten emergency alert' and caused emergency reserves to be unlocked to solve the problem. Which, essentially… the new pathways to the engineering knowledge he used to create Shadowman and so on were from the memories of all the bad things that happened because everything was being concentrated in the threat analysis portion. The rest of his brain was getting shortchanged, and putting the neurons there on overdrive… There's a reason humans make fewer connections as they get older. Contrary to popular belief, they can create some new nerve cells, but there are around nine specialized caretaker cells per neuron for a reason. And new nerve cells start from scratch when it comes to connections and the point here is that connections are needed. He wasn't getting the nutrients he needed for maintaining the ones he had, let alone building new cells. He's lucky he used to be healthy as a horse, because this was just begging for seizures or strokes. Then the depression comes into it. Helping others creates the most positive feedback, so off his meds he felt that this struggle was the only thing worth doing, worth existing for. That he did not matter, only this. Forget having nothing but tea, he'd wear the same clothes for two weeks straight and none of them picked up on this because we don't need to change armor and that's what they had been built in."

He was the higher level master, so it was a bit atypical that Rock was the one he needed the guidance of in this, that it was Rock's presence and examination of his strategy sets that reassured him. Still, "I'm sorry, you don't know any neurology and it's not fair to…"

Rock really didn't care.

"He was burning himself up. If I hadn't returned and ranted at the Wilybots about human health needs and he'd escaped on his own and started doing this again… I would estimate he'd have lasted about two years before… probably cancer. He's got great genes and no family history of stroke or heart disease or this, but marinate cells in stress and malnutrition poisons long enough without enough repair resources while his mental state keeps his immune system weak enough it will be hard pressed to deal with the poor hygiene problems and eventually there will be a mutation that doesn't kill the cell, that the immune system does not spot soon enough, that will multiply like crazy and steal away what nutrients and calories he has in order to do it, and he'd die. No, he would have died. He won't. I won't let him. No, he's old and humans die and I have to accept that, but not yet. Not when I haven't even… I'm sorry. I started out trying to say that I needed to figure out when it would start being a good idea to be quiet and let him talk, and here I am wasting your processor space."

"It's not a waste. I love you, I want you to be happy, and, um…" How to put it in terms Blues would get? He could feel Rock hitting up his rather nice individualized translation manager. "If you talk to me, then since you need to talk about this then you'll be able to get it off your chest so you can listen to him. Also, worrying wastes processor space. Talking to me about it should be," Rock called up Blues' performance logs. "Yeah, I was right. Talking about it is using up about eighty-one percent less space than not talking about it, and the total area dedicated to this has decreased during the conversation, look. You're worrying less and that's helping you do your duty. Also, worrying wasn't accomplishing much but you've been getting a whole bunch of work done on solution sets just in the process of explaining it to me. You're not running around in circles, you're able to calm down and analyze it yourself because since I'm here you feel like you have help but when you're alone you think you can't do anything. I'm not giving much tactical input, yeah, but the fact I'm providing oversight is giving you a confidence boost. You don't think you can do it alone but you think you can with my help. So you're getting stuff done instead of wasting valuable headspace feeling terrible because you think there's no one that can help you and that you can't do it alone."

Blues was amazed. "You're good at this."

"It's not that hard. This is just data analysis and I was built as a lab assistant." Rock really did think it was nothing special. "I think the reason you can't do it is that you're not impartial, really. So your judgment is compromised and you know it. The thing about how doctors aren't supposed to proscribe medicines to themselves? You can look at people, but you can't step out of your own head to look at it. At first you weren't trusting my judgment because you thought I was just an innocent kid and I trusted because I was ignorant, then when I helped Rush you saw that I knew what I was doing. I think I need to bring in data instead of just tell you things, though. You'll listen when people say horrible things about you but if someone says something good you think it's too good to be true unless they can prove it. So, yeah, the data analysis practice is coming in handy. You really thought you were wasting my time even though I said helping you definitely wasn't until I proved it." That was both sad because it meant Blues didn't think Rock loved him enough to want to listen to him because Blues thought he wasn't a person that someone like Rock would love.

Sad Rock was hitting all those 'must look after cute little hurt goodbot' instincts. "I'm sorry."

"Yes, it is something sad, but if that's an apology then I don't want it. It would be stupid to forgive you for doing something wrong when the point is that it's not wrong, it's right. Oh, data. Okay. In terms of total processor space, here's how the amount of space this frees in yours compares to the amount of mine this takes up. Very large net gain. In terms of strategy sets, I've shown you your logs, so look at mine." Why wasn't Rock pulling the data on that together?

Pretty please would Blues look over his work and check if the answers were wrong and help him figure out how to do them right?

This kid? Had amazing, amazing strategy sets. How could any robot master who hadn't had their programming turned on its head say no to that?


	8. Reason & Blues

Yay! Blues thought he was smart and the cutest thing ever! "Also, I love you, and that's the biggest reason but it's one that takes awhile to collect concrete data to verify as it is verified by the results of actions and I haven't been able to do that much for you. Yeah, Blues, I know I've done stuff to help you but the amount is insufficient." Rock did the equivalent of glaring at his logs. "I love you a lot more than this non-random…. Oh, it's increasing over time. I was just looking at the average at first and the average is inaccurate." The mean value was mean for making it look like he didn't love Blues. "This is a really small and non-random sample, and since there were times when I was talking to you and times I wasn't I need to do some kind of block design. Time and amount do have a positive correlation, but I think it might be exponential. Could you maybe stay for at least two months so I can get a decent data set?" And have lots of fun together, and talk a lot, and listen to Blues sing, and bond, and… "Please?"

"If at all possible." Come hell or high water. Amazing. Forget the buster. Relative firepower did not matter if Rock could make the other person not be able to stand the idea of losing him. Even if they didn't ever see him again, although… Yes, wow. That was one huge Christmas (or whichever holiday) card list. Even if they were Wilybots that went undercover with no forwarding address and didn't watch the news or… Knowing that someone like this existed could even restore _his _faith in sentient beings. Including humanity, even, because if _Dr. Light_ could raise someone like Rock, then they couldn't be all that bad. Even if their processor design made him have to resist the urge to transfer their files over to something that didn't suck.

…Blues made a note of that for later. The problem was that the backup process and what he'd done worked for robot masters and teleportation wasn't healthy for humans but it worked in that the entity that left was the one that arrived. Copies, however, were not the same entity, or Albert could have just loaded the last copy they'd made of Blues' systems into a new body, started it up, and called it Blues. Rock and on down the line were edited copies and while they were compatible to the extent they could swap programs around no matter what the copyright violators changed to try to make it look like they had their own design.

He should probably not bring that up. Still, though…

Given: the physical universe exists.

Given; the physical universe has a set of program codes/laws of physics.

Given: Murphy's Law.

Given: there are detectable bugs in the laws of physics.

Conclusion: A system this complex working this well for this long without debugging becoming necessary arising from random chance has a probability approaching zero.

Which meant either big bangs were common enough that this place could exist in the same way that the edge of a circle of infinite radius could be perfectly flat, someone was putting in a_ lot_ of effort to keep this thing running, and/or as Jack L. Chalker had imagined (why was the first book in that series the only good one?) then at some point a big bang had created a physical universe that created other physical universes in the same way random chance had created chemicals that reproduced themselves on Earth and he had been built with programs capable of creating other programs.

If 'physical universes' could evolve, then there was eventually going to be one that could think given the infinite amount of time or lack thereof for it to happen in. Working from an admittedly still limited sample, sentience and use of the 'trust-love' interaction principle seemed like probable strategies.

Rock did the equivalent of clearing his throat because he was wondering why Blues wasn't paying attention to him.

Blues realized he'd been standing still for almost fifteen seconds and he had a large backlog of information and assistance requests. He shoved the philosophical analysis into the processor space it was supposed to stay in like a good subroutine and went back to what he had been doing.

Given the amount of quarks involved here… uncertainty principle… if a physical universe had a processor akin to the human brain or their chips… say it took this much to keep the laws of physics going (and the Newtonian laws and many others did not operate on the quark level. The _database of the observer_ could control what went on at the quark level and produce measurable effects on the results of the experiment in normal perceived reality (often the best examples of the really weird stuff involved visible light, for some reason, like the experiment with the path it took through a substance being the shortest route despite the fact there was no way it should possibly be able to 'know' what that route was in advance)… um… Wow?

Tachyons, time did not exist on that level, so if there was an entity that was essentially running the Newtonian laws of physics and perceived reality like he could run a virtual reality in his head if he wanted to…

Hold it. Stopping. Now.

There was a postulate in a lot of Christian theology (and if you were talking about a singular entity that had created the universe, was it, was a being capable of being that loving then that was a good place to start, knew the course of history and at the same time made free will possible, which was mutually contradictory… on the level of Newtonian physics, but not on the deeper levels…) that there was a reason for the lack of proof.

For one thing, if you knew there was a powerful entity for a fact then, well. The Old Testament happened. Fundamentalists happened.

There was no proof. There had to be doubt. Faith, service, love, they had to be choices, the products of free will. If there was proof, then they wouldn't be choices made out of hope there was someone who cared, faith that things would turn out for the best somehow, and love for other people (and the trinity was god as creator, god as human, god as dwelling within everyone's heart…) they would be slavery. Obey or stay dead when you die.

No, it was return to the earth when you die… that tied into reincarnation…

No. Stop.

Uncertainty principle. You could know the velocity or position of a quark. Not both.

Hope or fact.

Faith or knowledge.

Love or necessity.

Father or owner.

Probability analysis was one thing. Doubt was considered inevitable, what with the lack of proof. As you knew if you did any work with statistics, experimental results were not proof, they were just odds and could be coincidences or faked. Same thing with miracles. Faith wasn't something you had, it was something you tried to have. The belief that you could make up for your mistakes, that it was worth it to try to be a good person, that it was worth it to help others (when you help someone then you are god), that you were not alone (when two or three are gathered in the name of… of love? Then god was with them).

He could think about this sort of thing. He could theorize. Theology and philosophy (study of god, love of wisdom) were great things. Were ethics, really. The problem was that he was terribly afraid that he had enough knowledge of a large enough variety of basic principles that constructing a proof might be possible. The Uncertainty Principle had been proven, for one thing.

And knowing would ruin everything. Either there was no one and he was the greatest entity there was on this planet and he just wasn't up to it and they were all _doomed_, or there was and belief there was proof had, throughout history, equaled fanaticism and attempts to take advantage of the 'fact.'

Equaled things that would make any entity that cared about people incredibly sad. Wars, hatred…

So proof would destroy this. If there was no god then refusing to prove that was a selfish act, as that relationship-based resource was a significant asset (humans lived longer, for one thing: less worrying was great) and even if it was a placebo effect removing it would be to his detriment.

If there was one, then refusing to prove it would be unselfish. Proven, it would cease to be a placebo effect and become a much greater asset. However, while he was aware of the fact that taking away free will was bad, he really couldn't say that he was happy Dr. Light had been allowed to kill him and do all that to his father. It had been_ his_ free will, but it certainly hadn't been _theirs_.

Well, no. There were always options. He could have killed Dr. Light before Dr. Light killed him, for one thing. It still had been a horrible thing to go through.

So… if god existed he was going to be a little upset with him, and given all the stuff humans had been up to if he existed he'd been through more than enough of that already. Yeah, not going to start in on a proof. Solving it one way or another would just make him worse off, and whichever answer he got if he publicized it a lot of people would be angry.

Anyway, he did do a lot better working with Rock on problem-solving then the combined output of them working solo. Two working together could do more work than two working solo, that collaboration multiplier was why his kind existed. Two people that trusted each other working together could do more than two strangers: game theory.

Two people that loved each other might not be enough. Three? A family?

If he was being forced to help Albert, then he'd probably not be able to save him. Since he wanted to, since he was motivated, since he had help…

The grass stains had looked better than this. The plain coat looked so sterile, the same thing that had made his father add the scarf to Blues' original… you really couldn't even call them outfits. If he took off the scarf would his father think he didn't want it anymore? But…

Thank goodness he'd guessed right. "Could you give it back to me when I can give you one? I owe you birthday, holiday, and father's day gifts."

Fingers that were far too thin (someone who didn't know the reason why might think they were clawlike) lingered on the thick, hand-knit, bright but not to the point of being neon scarf. Perhaps he felt the lingering warmth from Blues' body: the amount of thinking he was doing made his systems give off quite a bit of heat. He had a decent cooling system, which was actually part of the reason why he 'breathed,' but he had to watch it anyplace too sunny or he could get hot enough he got significant performance loss, and a robot master who didn't have pseudo-flesh insulation had to worry about burning human skin on contact sometimes.

Forget solar panels: Pharaohman got his power from the_ heat_ of the desert sun.

It was possible that Dr. Cossack was Blues' favorite of the other builders partially because the first time he'd seen the man he'd been wearing a green scarf. That had been before Blues had been given his and it might have been what gave his father the idea. He had also been asking about temperature issues and wondering about using realistic pseudo-clothing to deal with them as opposed to ceramic armors (metal armor conducted and was worse than useless) which was what resulted in Iceman's anorak. He had some interesting ideas and he was improving with each one, but he was nowhere near Blues' father's level when it came to design.

Coming to the family room went well, he made the necessary apologies and his father settled in an armchair by the fireplace. The camping trip idea was well-received.

During a conversation a restraining order had to be issued because Toadman could easily jump forty feet when startled and Snakeman found this way too funny. The line between stealth practice and stalking had been officially crossed when Snakeman provoked Shadowman into hitting him with a knockout shuriken and leaving it there as an object lesson (good at manipulation, you had to give him that), used on Toadman, took off all the removable armor (Toadman did agriculture and could get very, very dirty), waited for him to wake up, and leapt out at him before his mind cleared to see how far he jumped without it on. That complicated matters because Woodman had taken Snakeman (one of the new Wilybots) under his bough and wanted to bring him along. Since Ringman was Toadman's brother, after all, and had a protective streak a mile wide that was going to be trouble, especially as Toadman was an agriculture management bot and due to water issues and interest in plants if Diveman was going to invite someone it would be him.

"I don't think Snake will behave if we bring them both even if Ringman is in charge of most of judicial." He was a policeman, after all, so Blues had put him in charge of managing this sort of thing provided decisions were submitted to him to be looked over until they found themselves needing more than an ad hoc setup. "He was bored stiff until we emancipated him or whatever you want to call it. He wasn't supposed to leave the mine area or do anything actually fun, so he gets a kick out of going places and doing things he's not supposed to."

"He sounds like a teenager," Dr. Light commented.

"I think it's more testing boundaries, actually. He had to stay there and obey or die. He's a bit euphoric about having freedom, but on the other hand he's afraid of losing it. He's better at escapology and sneaking around than Shadow. They did a test run for a couple days where Shadow wasn't allowed to use his stealth or shadow travel capabilities, and Snake actually beat him. He didn't get spotted by the guards there once until he started moving around in a cardboard box. Apparently he saw that in a video game commercial. And it worked as well in the real world as most video game tricks." Thinking about it, "I don't know if it's entirely sunk in yet, actually. He seems to have this idea that he's going to get hauled back eventually, so why not make the most of it while it lasts? Doing something wrong isn't an issue because he's already doing something they said was wrong and he's the happiest he's ever been. I didn't so much order him not to go there because that would be begging for him to do it more as set up a teleport protocol where if he goes inside the radius he'll be teleported right back to base. He'll probably try to sneak in, but if that makes him happy and he gets 'punished' without it being by death that might do some good."

Rock looked up from the game of tug of war he was playing with Rush. "I don't know. It might be a bad thing, because he was trapped there and couldn't get out, and now there's someplace he can't get into and there's someone he wants to see there. Not to mention that you're putting him back 'in his place.' I think he's just teasing. I mean, if he wanted to scare Toadman he could have done a lot more while he was knocked out. They're both green animalbots so he might want to be friends. And if he was lonely, not being talked to except for orders and reports with people who didn't care, then someone who responds that much to him being there is probably something he really wants, it's just showing him that he can get it for things besides being good at things and pranks."

Something occurred to Blues, and he felt like an idiot for not thinking of it earlier. "Do you want to talk to him?"

"Sure." Rock smiled. Of course he wanted to talk to people!

"Toadman and Ringman too? For now, at least." Blues looked him over. "I think I want to have you work with Ringman. He tends to get called in to deal with mobsters and serial killers with guns or more and no hesitation to kill. He's good at that, but now that I think about it that's not the mindset you want when you're dealing with messed-up kids as opposed to hardened criminals. He wasn't that happy about getting assigned to this, actually. He did say that Snakeman wasn't in his skill set as a cop, so he was going to have to default to 'overprotective brother' mode. Yeah, it's not fair to get intervention requests in general sent to him just because they're a pain for me." Very speculative, but he didn't want to ask because if he asked Rock would say yes, provided he was competent, and Blues didn't want to burden him. Then again, it wasn't a burden, he wanted to help, and he was good at it. "Do you want me to tell everyone to refer personal arguments that come up to you?"

"Sure." No problem.

Okay… "A lot of people want to say hi. I'll set up… okay, you're in the directory. Are you getting pings?"

'You mean requests to talk? Yeah."

"They're not urgent, or if they are they'll be marked urgent, so feel free to tell them to call back later."

Rock nodded. "I will."

Roll wanted directory access so she could set things up with Ringman: granted, and the topic wandered around. Dr. Light was clearly aware of the scarf, and Blues had to work to both keep him and his once-friend from just asking leading questions and making him talk because of how hesitant they were here. Albert didn't know who Thomas was anymore, murdering monster or misunderstood friend, Thomas wanted him back but didn't know how or if he deserved him. The scarf that was meant to show Blues would keep his father safe and warm was the scarf Albert had given Blues as a sign of protection against Thomas, essentially. So he didn't know if Albert had changed his mind about never being friends again and seemed to think the scarf was marking territory, or something. Well, it was to a degree, but they were trying to see if it was safe to welcome him… He hated complications.

Rock joined Blues on the sofa, eventually, and Blues, far to one side against the armrest, let Rock with him up on the sofa, Blues' lap and the armrest propping his back up so he wasn't just lying flat. "Hmm?" You're welcome here, but what's the occasion?

Oh, checking his programs and his work over so he could be sure he'd taken good care of them. Of course. His pleasure.

Even more beautiful. Simple, clean and pure, a shining light seeing what was there to love and revealing it to all, "You make it seem so easy." And it was for him, simply… Why couldn't they all just get along? There were so many reasons why they could and why it would be best.

He held the child's face, to look at it, although he looked past it more than he examined the surface. "Blessed are the peacemakers." Such an odd thing to say, and how that that bit of random musing been authorized to send output to his vocalizer? Rock didn't get why he'd just said that either, but Rock seemed to understand everything but how amazing he was.

Just… he'd thought there wouldn't be a word, but a word came. Divine.

Perhaps he had gone crazy now. Like father like son, after all, and he'd been through enough to cause it. Yet, this feeling. "You think my code is like dancing, but yours reminds me of…"

"Of what?"

"The music of the spheres." Rock was flattered, but didn't really get why Blues was saying that either, gentle questioning poke at his mind to be let in, but he was too hypnotized to even grant that. "Beautiful."

Rock blushed a bit, and he found himself smiling and wishing the sunglasses were gone. He hadn't leaked the thought, and yet Rock reached up and removed them. "I think your code is prettier, and if we're talking about faces too yours is better."

That was noted, but on the same level as that other request for an explanation. Rock wanted to know why Blues would possibly think Rock the child was more beautiful than a more detailed, more wise, slightly more mature and defined face. His, his father had put effort into. But what was wisdom, and surfaces mattered but it was what they showed that did, and Rock's face, amazingly, showed Rock.

It had been there when he'd first looked, forged for his father and sister and everyone, then refined itself for Rush's sake, then for his, then for their race's, and the better it became the simpler it grew. Blues had thought that people were complicated, that the more you knew the more complex the strategies had to be, and they were beautiful in so many ways, but was it really just that simple? He could project ahead, and refined further…

"Not quite there yet, but close."

"Where?" Would Blues help him refine his programs, if that was what he was talking about? Please.

His mouth opened, and there were no words that had not been said so many times they became cliché and trite. He took refuge in scientific terminology. "Underlying principle. I could see the effects, I have reached a level of approximation, and I can see how you have reached this, and I can't myself. Optimum strategy. That from which all is derived. I can't believe…" But he was, he was seeing it. "I can't believe I thought entropy was death."

"Huh?" What did entropy have to do with it? Well, it had to do with everything, but specifics and an explanation would be nice.

"Order. Chaos. Sameness, uniqueness. Two sides, same thing. The results are obvious and I can't believe them."

"Why not?"

"It's unbelievable."

Rock had no clue what he was talking about but feelings he could get. "Too good to be true?"

"I think it's going to need some time to sink in. I see it, I just can't believe it, I can't incorporate it into my strategy set. I was looking at the physical, the logical, and I have seen the results of these principles being valid in the… Of course the attempts to get a verifiable grand unified theory failed. You can't unify anything if you're only looking at half of it." He wasn't formatting his words decently now. The wavelengths were all over the place and since he hadn't set decent time intervals either he sounded very strange. He certainly wasn't singing, but humans didn't get these effects unless they were singing and working at getting them.

This was… what explained everything. The way to keep them all from suffering.

"This wasn't what I was built for. I was built to care for, for everything, but to do that I need to understand everything." He had to both do this and not do it.

Roll had just decided to get insistent, but was ignored. "Father, Dr…" What to call him? Forget that. "Something weird's going on with him, and no one has any idea. He's letting people link, but he's just… He notices us, sometimes, and we can look through all we want, but no one can make heads or tails of it and if you look for too long it gets really, really hard to look away!"

"Don't look." Dr. Light. "Tell them not to look, unlink, shut down if they have to. I programmed him to figure out how to devise strategies for dealing with not just problems, but… everything. You're all derived from that code. If he really is on the verge of figuring out the grand unified theory, you're going to want to know. Was it that you couldn't or didn't want to?"

"Really didn't want to. It's, it's amazing, but you _want_ it and it's really scary how it starts to make nothing else matter compared to it."


	9. Reason's Blues

"Rock?"

"I'm just really confused. I think what started it was that I was confusing him, maybe."

"Blues?"

Father. That wasn't a word Blues had made, it was a whimper. He… so beautiful. But, but his father needed him.

"Blues?" Albert got up now and ordered Megaman to, "Get off him!"

It wasn't Rock's fault, and he didn't want him to go, but he wanted his father. "Father…" I don't know what to do.

"I'm trying but he felt that he didn't want me do and I can't!"

His father's arms were around him. "Blues?"

"Father." Love you, the not-song echoed.

He wanted (the instruction manual for the universe source of them all self of them all love of them all), "Nirvana. That's the word for it."

"You mean… if you understand everything you'll become one with it?" The frail arms could not squeeze him very hard at all. "Please don't, don't!" Not when you promised that you would stay, that you would help, that you would give me a reason to live. You gave me hope, and if you destroy it…

"That's not a bad thing, you'll see eventually, but I don't want to leave you behind. You wouldn't be alone, but you'd think you were and I don't want you to mourn me when you shouldn't again. The first time almost killed you. It's just… How are you managing it?" That question to Rock was half admiring, half desperate.

"Managing what?"

"Being here."

"Um, I am?"

"It's so simple to you. It always has been. The kind father held you and the cruel one came rarely." Mine were the other way around. "Love earned love instead of hate. I want that. I want it to be simple and clean, but if I leave this self that hurts then he'll suffer and I'd do anything to make him stop."

"And if you suffer then you can't make him stop even if you stay, because he'll know you're hurting because of him even if you don't mind?"

He nodded shamefully, feeling his father's anguish in the arms that held him. "I can't find a way to make him stop hurting. All the things I know and they're not working."

"If you stopped hurting then you could stay, and if you were happy then he would be."

"But I can't stop hurting," not while he is. A Catch 22. "Help me," the words came at last, and why did they sound like a surrender instead of a demand? He'd been demanding answers from Rock, but if they were the wrong ones that was no use. "I don't know what to do." That admission. That was it, his pride.

"Blues…" Rock leaned up to embrace him in body, and in mind… oh.

Safe. Loved.

His father had loved him, but hadn't been able to keep him safe. The thing was, that didn't matter.

Unconditional.

That was what he had missed, in the maze of special cases that came from thinking that hate existed when it was just love that had been distorted, aimed wrong, messed up. He'd known that, two sides of the same coin, and yet it hadn't really sunk in. It was hard to not believe that something was more than an illusion when that illusion had killed you. The only way to be safe from it was to not believe in it.

No wonder Rock could love those who tried to kill him. That didn't matter. It flat-out didn't. Trust was what worked. The fact some people didn't get that did not change the fact that trust was the best way to be. Love was what worked.

Make love not war? The humans had said that. Why did they keep mistaking sex for love again? Well, he didn't have a sex drive. That thing tried to get their poor brains to think reproducing was the best thing ever when it was only the be-all and end-all for animals.

Poor things. They couldn't see, and they were wandering around in the dark when all they had to do, all he'd had to do, was open his eyes and see what he'd known was there.

All of that chaos and confusion… he needed to debug and defragment. Badly.

Before, he would have teleported away, afraid, but there was no reason to be.

He wanted to go into sleep mode now, but that was far easier to fight than the truth. "Father?"

"Blues?" So worried… He reached up to touch him, let him know he could still move and was real.

"Don't worry. Everything will be okay. I won't die, I promise. I need to go into sleep mode, but I'll be awake in eight hours." Or so. Oh, the others. He let the robot masters know that all would be well and then firmly shut the links: he'd explain later.

"Less than six. I'll help." Rock.

"Could you… explain?"

Eyes downcast, he reminded Blues that, "I don't know how."

"So simple to you…" he murmured. "Where should I sleep?"

"I could have a bot carry you to a guest room," Roll sounded a little iffy on that.

"Here," Rock said firmly. "It's only five, you'll be awake before eleven, and they might want to make sure that you're healthy and keep an eye on you. This is where we are and it's not the main lab but they can get stuff from my room and Roll's room."

"Alright." That settled, his eyes closed. "I trust them, Father, don't worry." How much sleep did he need? "If you feel tired, please rest." He tilted his head so a cheek rested against one arm, pressed a bit. That was both pressing closer to him and displaying his neck, saying that he was sure that his father would protect him and he was safe from his father. Love you. "Love you," he murmured aloud, just to be on the safe side.

"I love you too, Blues."

"I know." He smiled and let the sleep entrance process complete.

-

"I have no idea what this variable means."

Why were they looking at her? Roll just shrugged helplessly. "I think part of what we were looking at was him going in circles, or back and forth. He had two variables or solution sets, and they'd keep logically progressing to the next one, and then Rock gave him a conversion equation between the two variables, a whole lot of equations got simplified in a heartbeat, and that was it."

"The Grand Unified Theory is the natural law from which all other natural laws are derived. Last I heard, they'd managed to work in everything but gravity."

"Strong & weak nuclear forces and electromagnetism: three of the four." Dr… Uncle Albert? But they were being doctors now, so Dr. Williamson.

"He said that we were looking at half of it, so that might mean there are eight at that level."

"Nothing's coming to me." The inventor of the modern fusion generator and teleportation, the world's once-leading expert in physics and engineering was no more.

"Not my field." And her father was clueless.

"He just gave a conversion equation? The one meter equals one hundred centimeters type? Wouldn't he need some sort of proof?"

"I don't know the conversion factor, but yes. I think there was proof. Or, he just looked at it and knew it was right. Maybe he knew already? I mean, he'd been looking at Rock's setup." Which was showing on the screen of the other secure laptop that had been brought up.

"Do you have any copies of his programs that were made since his death?"

"Maybe there's one at the new base? I haven't had an opportunity."

"Can you contact them?"

"They moved while I was in the asylum, and it would have been a bad idea for me to know. Roll? Are the links working?"

"Links work like a tree, so if we wanted to talk to each other we had to go through him. Or a shared robot would work, but none of the Wilybots have access to my bots." They'd _better_ not even think about going anywhere near her babies.

"We don't have a copy. Blues-dono did not allow it."

Three cries of "Shadowman!" with various emotions attached.

"Williamson-hakase." He bowed in acknowledgement. "Righto-san, Roll-san." They received nods.

"Do you have any idea what that was?" She wished her father was a little more practical. Um, hello? Wilybot? Here! In her-their house! The one with the drugs, even!

"He solved the problem he was born to. Completed the purpose of his existence. And yet he stays." She didn't recognize that gesture of respect. That meant it was antique and ultra-formal, even for Shadowman. "We are honored."

"Exactly how much like the Buddhist idea of enlightenment is this?"

"…which branch? They have a lot of them. It works… decently well. It's vague, but this is hard to describe so I suppose it works as a... sketch? We have the complete Eightfold Path built in, actually. Unless our programming is altered. I'm currently in violation of the entire Sila category. Although once we go legit I can stop lying, stealing, and selling intoxicants, thank goodness."

"The entire Eightfold Path?" Roll checked. "Well, the wording is a little… I think you're right. But I don't_ think_ I'm enlightened." Not like what had just happened, anyway.

"There are two more steps. Right Understanding and Right Liberation. Those don't have much in the way of detail. I think you have to complete the rest of the path before you can start working on them. They're _probably_ enlightenment and nirvana. Although the first eight steps tend to involve considerable effort for humans, remember, so these probably are a lot less easy then one would think."

"As in, there's a Wrong Liberation." Looking through the earlier list, she corrected that. "A lot of Wrong Liberations."

"Most likely. I had to manually shut down quite a few of the people built in the last two months. It wasn't that likely, given Blues-dono, but I think one possibility was the formation of a group mind."

"I did feel drawn in, you're right." She looked at where Blues and her twin brother were curled up on the couch. The cords for downloading system data had been designed to look like earbuds, so they might have fallen asleep listening to music instead of… "It was sort of like music, wasn't it? It wasn't sound, but…"

"I thought it was like salt water repeatedly transitioning between the solid and liquid states, but then I think in chemicals and their structures, so don't mind me."

"Programming language?" Dr. Light looked at his colleague.

"Do you think to yourself in neurotransmitters?" Of course not. "Most people think in whatever their native language is." Most people. "Remember Oslo from grad school? He thinks in terms of special relationships of points on a three-dimensional grid. No, not with connect the dot pictures, before you ask. He's very good at translating back and forth, but remember how he took a little longer than usual to recover when something happened that shocked all of us speechless? He not only had to start thinking again, he had to start translating."

"Oh, that time when… how on earth would you say 'what do you mean, they actually were…" Child present. "What Professor Oak and so on… You remember. How would you say that in relative positions?"

"Well, consider that you just said that in sonic vibrations."

"Point."

Shadowman seemed amused. "I'm going to have to change some file labels. Well, how is 'artificially produced isometric-hexoctahedral crystal lattice of carbon with large amounts of boron contamination,' doing, then?"

"Shadowman, I'm on my medication right now and have no idea what that means."

"Diamond?" Roll raised her eyebrow. "That's a blue to gray-colored diamond and the only diamond type that's naturally a semiconductor instead of an insulator. If it's made like that then you can make computer chips out of it if you do it right."

"Exactly. Personally, I think my language works better, but feel free to continue with the mouth noises if you like."

"You call Rock that?"

"Yes?" What was so odd about it?

You call him that and you've tried to kill him? "I don't get you guys."

"Program tampering in a good cause." Oh.

"What's Blues' name."

"Lonsdaleite. Although he might also need to be re-labeled. Most likely, in fact." That was a relative of diamond usually formed out of meteoric graphite by the heat of entering the atmosphere. It had a hardness of seven to eight on the Mohs Scale, about the same as hardened steel. Normal diamond had a score of ten, and because of how the Mohs scale worked that meant Rock's was around ten times stronger than Blues' stone. The color was yellow, although a brownish yellow. A dirtied, tarnished yellow?

"You pick good names." Roll had to give him that.

"Thank you, I try."

"What's your name?"

"Iridium-platinum alloy. What percentage of that is Iridium-192 varies by mood and amount of combat enablement programming." Iridium-192 was the most common radioactive isotope, and made up a large percentage of 'missing' material that could potentially be used for 'dirty' nuclear weapons. It also could be used to check for flaws and chemotherapy. Most of earth's iridium was thought to have come from the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs, both of them were involved in catalyzing a lot of chemical reactions, iridium could be used to paint porcelain black, platinum was used for black and white long-lasting archival photography despite the fact it wasn't very light sensitive… This said a lot. Among them that shadows weren't that large a part of his identity. Ninjaman would be a better name.

"What's mine?" She was really interested now.

"Vitreous carbon."

Roll found herself blushing a bit. "Are you flattering me?"

"No, no, you're wonderful on defense, amazingly useful in general, especially when it comes to making things, and Dr. Light's right Handman."

"You are flattering me. And it's working. You_ are_ good."

"Thank you, I try."

"Are you currently adhering to Right Speech?"

"Of course I am. It's simply that the truth is flattering in your case."

"Shadowman, could you please flirt _later_?" Oh. Wow. Dr… That wasn't a Dr. Wily thing to say, or look, or treat one of his bots.

"Hai, Williamson-hakase." Ninja were loyal servants and this one was back on duty. There was a pause for a moment. "How is Rokku-san?"

"They're both physically healthy, that's easy enough to tell. As for programming, that was never my strong suit but just looking at the diagrams he's simplified quite a bit today." Dr. Light?

He showed him the laptop. "Here's before Blues arrived." A diagram. "After he was altered to be link-capable with Rush and Blues." Another. She'd seen these, and while she doubted Shadowman was in her programming league the main things were easy enough to spot. "And now."

"Yare yare." My goodness.

"One language in the house at a time, please." Names were okay to a degree, but using hai for 'yes sir' and then this so close together was pushing it even with the flattery.

"Of course, Miss Roll." She could just tell what he was really saying was, "Hai, Roll-san," but at least the words were in English. "How is…" She could just feel him reaching for a title. "Director Blues?" Director? That worked. Conductor would be funny, though. Which was a reason not to use it, actually. They'd need to be taken seriously.

"We have prior to death." One screen. "And now. What with everything that's happened in between, the first one is so outdated it's effectively useless."

"Do you have one from before the first blocks were installed, President Light?" As in, President of what was now Light Robotics as opposed to... Ouch.

"I'll look it up."

"If he's suggesting what I think he's suggesting, get D43H17." Day forty-three at three o'clock? Why was that significant? Because it seemed to be. Very significant.

"Got it."

Aside from the differences between the Protoman and Rockman models' programming, which were considerable, it was easy to see that as an earlier stage along the same path Rock's files, which she knew well, had taken to the state they shared currently. As opposed to it, the pre-death model and what she'd felt earlier seemed like…

The thrashings of a child's mind trying to understand why their father hated them enough to want them dead and an adult's mind still haunted by the same question.

The window changed. D43H18, and she could see that shift as the first step toward that chaos. What had happened in that hour?

I told you so, that look said, and her father's admitted that he should have listened. "If mutual trust is the optimum long-term strategy, then exposure to large amounts of seemingly successful cruelty and unsuccessful trust during a short period would produce data that would cause the experimenter to reach the conclusion that cruelty is also a successful strategy until that is contradicted by analysis over the long term."

"You're admitting it was cruelty now? That's progress, at least. The correct term is child abuse."

"I know, Albert. I know."

"Do you have any idea when they will wake up? And why is," there was another pause, "Rock also in sleep mode?" Rock? Just plain Rock? In English that was normal, but in Japanese you did not use the first name without any honorific unless you were close friends or being very rude. Well, they were speaking English, but given that he'd called her father President Light and her Miss Roll… Wow. She knew it was hard not to love her slightly older brother, but wow. Especially since that had looked like a difficult choice. She recognized the 'I give up' she'd often felt when dealing with Rock and his Rock-ness.

"He's helping Blues debug, defragment, and so on. You got here fast, there's five and a half hours left."

"It's been twenty-two minutes already? The security here is _that _good, Shadowman?"

She wasn't sure if she should be insulted or not. Shadowman's response was, "A few people wanted to activate emergency false alarms to get him to wake up and tell us what was going. We elders had to dissuade them. They'll thank us when they come to."


	10. Blues' Reason

"I thought so. You were in and out of the Pentagon in about half an hour and the documents you were looking for had been misfiled."

"They don't have a robot master there." Hence it had been a cakewalk. "Also, I've been trying to get less dependent on the Shadow Door Technique. Blues looked it over with me and we spotted quite a few ways for defenders to make coming out of the wrong shadow fatal that are hard to detect pre-emergence. Losing a challenge of stealth without master abilities to a seven-week-old was shameful."

"Fatal? I thought shining a light on it mid-transit wouldn't be more than an inconvenience."

"No, not lights, applications of the principle that lets me do it. And fatal as in for everything within a tenth of a kilometer. No one but us knows the details and no one but me could produce the substances in question even with the designs, at least not on earth. Since what you use for me was found on a meteorite and it was preset to produce the shadow transit substance, it's a good idea to have contingency plans."

"So that's why he's Shadowman instead of something related to his overall abilities."

"I didn't know it could make other things until…"

"Dr. Williamson?" Roll made a note to ask what was embarrassing enough Shadowman would interrupt his boss. "If they are both healthy, stable, in no danger and there is nothing else, then I should go report back. Are there any messages you wish me to deliver?"

"Please tell them that I'm very grateful for all their help."

"Although you wished us to consider ourselves adults under your command instead of children obeying their father, you did build us and we do consider you well worth following. If the need for a choice between you and Director Blues had arisen our loyalty would have been to you."

"That wouldn't have been wise."

"Perhaps, perhaps not. But that is what we would have chosen." He bowed again. "All of us are well, work on our new home is progressing quickly," they were robot masters, they had minions, and a lot of the more dangerous ones had been built for construction in the first place, "and if you feel the need please call on us for any reason."

"I won't be ordering you around like that anymore."

"If you feel the need," he repeated, and bowed once more. "If you wish to speak to us, Director Blues can provide a connection. Miss Roll, I am sorry for the intrusion and hope that I might be granted the privilege of entering your domain under better circumstances. President Light, I hope that you and all here are well, and thank you for taking good care of my father." It would be good care… or else. Roll was reminded of the 'thank you for not smoking' signs. "Until we meet again."

She wasn't sure how he'd snuck up behind them, but that was a smoke bomb. When it cleared and she could see that there wasn't smoke residue all over everything she decided that he was okay until proven otherwise.

Drama over and some information gotten, they returned to looking at things until a halt was called for dinner. Dr. Williamson hadn't been able to contribute much but suggestions of things to look at since the sort of data he'd once been able to read like a billboard now was Greek to him and hence was put back in the armchair with the various dishes placed on the side table along with the clearly sorely missed green tea.

So much for a family dinner since her father didn't seem willing to stop working on this without being forced to and Rock's puppy dog eyes were currently unavailable. She went over to the side of the couch, wanting a closer look to make sure he was okay.

He was still being incredibly cute. Getting Blues to snuggle: that took mad skills. She'd only seen him once before today in person, but with her or Wily he had either been surface cheerful, velvet glove failing to conceal cold steel or a naked blade that just went through where it wanted heedlessly. With Rock, though, he looked truly happy, innocence regained. Now that she listened there was a song he was singing, or whistling, whatever, and oh…

Dr. Light's tray slipped from her hands.

Beautiful. He was still asleep, but this was like listening to him dreaming? At peace, healed, hopeful, little musings that she couldn't follow since she didn't speak this. That was it, talking in his sleep, only these sounds were pure artistry, not random syllables.

She would have enjoyed it more if it hadn't made her _drop the meal she'd put her heart into making for her father_. This was so embarrassing, she'd never dropped anything like this in her life, her father seemed to think it was a sign of the Apocalypse that she'd caused food and coffee to go all over the floor, and…

Well, older brothers were supposed to be annoying sometimes.

She would have made him clean it up when he woke up, but Carrie (yes, derived from Carry, she'd been two days old when she named it, what did you expect?) was about to pounce on it, metaphoric tail wagging, in order to help her mommy.

When Rock did stuff like this he was sorry, and that made it hard to be angry and make him pay for it. Not to mention that there wasn't much she could extort out of Rock that couldn't be had just by asking. This was her fault for getting distracted, really, but it was still irritating.

She was making him help her find out how the coordination programming's space had gotten hijacked by music appreciation. That normally wouldn't happen. Even if it was really… okay, yeah, it just was that pretty, and she wasn't that into music. It was sort of, yes, it's pretty, now what? It didn't get the coffee roasted and if she was going to be listening to something she'd prefer it to be her family talking.

Maybe it was that this was family. Even annoying family…

…he was still in armor. He was _sleeping on the couch_, and he was still in armor. Gah! It wasn't as though one of hers wouldn't love to spend a lot of time with her getting altered into a stain remover and helping her out, but it was her job to keep them from having to fix other people's mistakes. It was okay to leave potential clothes spread out on the bed when there was a last-minute wardrobe emergency since something was in the wash and the teleconference was in five minutes, it was not okay to put trash on the floor instead of into the wastebasket.

He was larger than Rock by enough it mattered, was there anything that would fit? (…would serve him right to wake up naked…)

She hadn't been this irritated since Rock had forgotten to change out of his armor before going to bed the night after the end of the first war. There had dirty footprints (soot, lubricants, coolant, most of it not his thank goodness) all throughout the house and his sheets would have looked like camo if the original color had been blue instead of green.

This wasn't anywhere near as bad, it was just… that her brother had come home, and she didn't want them to need armor here, she didn't want the physical dirt from what they'd gone through before coming home to stain this place and remind them.

They wouldn't have to fight here. They wouldn't have to feel like their hands were stained here. Not if she had anything to say about it.

-

Dr. Light watched his daughter, whose embarrassment had been converted into annoyance, stalk off in search of pajamas that fit. "You could go through my clothing: it won't be too small, at least." Too big, all of it. Even his long johns would have to have their sleeves and pant legs rolled up more than a foot.

"I know, if I can't find anything I'll check." She could just grab it, but she was taking the time to see if there was anything better. He wondered if the airplane ones were loose enough to work. The mental image of those on Blues… Well, more like images.

On the child there had been at first they worked. On the hurt child they were too cheerful: the irony of the contrast made him ache. On the one who was locked away inside they were the same as the scarf: something human and soft on something that was inhuman and cold as he'd once thought reality was. On the one that had come back they would have seemed far too young. On this one, well, it was cliché for parents to say their children were little angels when they were asleep.

The little soft notes… he didn't know if Roll had been the one to notice them first. Albert hadn't been as excited about them as he should have been. He'd been quiet for some time, perhaps he had been listening for them. Now he wasn't listening only to his own thoughts he could hear them.

Actually, that was why he'd failed to hear Blues all this time: Blues hadn't been what he was listening to. Just his own preconceptions and what he thought mattered and the theories he'd had the arrogance to think were fact.

The way he held Rock was almost like the way someone of the age to believe in monsters held a teddy bear, curled up under the sheets. Thinking the bear could protect them from the things they thought were out there. Rock, the hero, could deal with real threats.

Like hatred, ignorance, and prejudice. He'd let Rock melt his heart, and how different was he from Blues? He knew, he'd written the code. If anything, Rock was less 'good' at the level of coding. Programming versus environment, nature versus nurture.

Perhaps it was that he'd just lost Albert and Rock had been there, by his side in his friend's place. That made it only natural to try to see if the person who acted like his partner, helped him, was in the lab with him, was also a good person. On top of the challenge he'd set himself, to give these robots every chance so that when they did not develop personalities and emotions that would prove Albert wrong and allow him to stop feeling guilty.

The one who understood programming better than anyone alive (until he'd built Blues) and the one who understood people and was fascinated by everything under the sun. Ancient cultural traditions, fusion: the stuff of fantasy and science fiction. He didn't know if Albert had gotten along with everyone, at the universities at least, because they were almost certain to share some interest or if…

He'd wanted his friend, and Rock had filled that gap when given the chance. It was ironic that he'd turned Blues into what he had been and Blues called Albert Father and he'd raised Rock as Albert had tried to raise Blues and Rock called him Father. Not really fair, was it?

Albert had always been the one who knew what to say, and then Rock had become the one to break the ice. With Roll having gone off to fetch another dinner and decent clothing they were the only people here that were awake and he had no idea how to talk to him. His forte was now Albert's weakness, he couldn't take refuge in talking about what he felt safe in until they'd rebuilt that bond. What there was to talk about was Blues, and Albert, and did he have any right to talk about what he'd failed to understand even though he had built him, he had been his best friend?

He'd… tried, while they were working on Gamma. But his olive branch had been a welder, the sort of shared project they'd bonded over and Albert couldn't do anymore. So his attempt to remind him of the good times had reminded him of how they were gone, possibly forever.

He wished Albert would say something, but he was listening to Blues and he didn't know if he had a right to intrude on them more than he already had.

Blues and Rock wanted him to, but he wished Rock would wake up. He'd somehow gotten Blues to want to take him on a camping trip, and when there was something being planned, something productive to do… Small talk involved no higher brain functions, leaving said functions with nothing to do but worry about slipping up and making things even worse.

He had no idea how to fix this, and he wished Albert would say something.

…but why would Albert want to put himself at risk yet again? He'd tried to convince Thomas so many times, before Blues' death, during the entire litigation for control of the patents and company, and he'd just been rejected again and again, hurt again and again. Why would Albert reach out? Especially when Thomas' attempts had been, essentially, 'let's do what I'm the reason you can't do anymore to create a robot that will be used to kill your creations' and 'forget about your son and help me make others to treat like things until they're no longer useful and will be killed' reminders of why Albert had rejected him.

When Albert wanted to help him, then it was fine, but if Albert wanted him to… not even help. If Albert did what Thomas wanted all was well, but if Albert said that what Thomas wanted was not the right thing to do, if he didn't do as he was told… "I'm sorry."

Albert looked at him, waiting.

"I was wrong." It was amazing how hard that was to admit: no, not admit, say. The next part was even harder. "I messed up." That was an understatement, but it was still far harder to admit that his mistake had negative consequences than to list those consequences. "I wanted him gone, I tried to destroy him, and I didn't listen when you said that was what I was doing, and eventually I thought it worked and I was glad, and for some reason I didn't… I thought that when he was gone it would all be over. It was, just not the way I thought it would be. But he's not gone, and you're both here. I want to… I don't deserve to be your friend. Not after everything. Let alone be his father. If I were you I wouldn't want me anywhere near either of you. I can't fix you, I don't know what I was thinking when I worked out the deal for you to come here. Just being in the lab again, being under my control isn't going to fix you, that was the entire problem in the first place. I want to try to make things better, but I fail at it. I thought if he were gone then all would be well, I thought that if you were here, and stuck here so you had to listen that I'd talk sense into you when it was really the other way around. I wanted to fix the problem, I put a lot of work into it, but it was worse than useless because I refused to admit that the problem wasn't him, or you, it was me. You were actually trying to help, both of you, trying to get me to see but I loved my own ego more than my best friend. I'm sorry."

"You actually have changed. I don't think I really believed it until now. You always were stubborn as an ox." His eyes closed as he bowed his head and smiled an unreadable smile. "Remember Steven? Fell for that bartender because of her figure and spontaneity, they had nothing in common? I can't believe they lasted six months, but then they wanted to get married, and I asked to be best man. I warned him. 'You color-code your sock drawer, she left clothing flung all over your dorm room. It might not matter, but why are you swearing to spend your life with her when you haven't ever even been roommates? You're only now getting engaged and you're asking me while you're picking out the ring? Get an apartment together, no one cares about living in sin nowadays and no one will think it's a shallow relationship if you're fiancées!' But no, they wanted a family, it was love at first sight, and they'd already decided to start having children as soon as the marriage license was signed. It went well until he graduated, and then we saw him at the YRO conference the year it was in Florida."

"…he seemed to be doing well."

"If it's not on a computer screen…" That sigh was half long-suffering, half the haunting familiar irritation. "When we last saw him it was an effort to get him to stop gushing about his perfect home life to work on stress failure testing and at the conference you gave him the sort of opening that would have meant we'd be stuck hearing about pina coladas and heartbeats for half an hour and he just said, 'Fine.' I got it out of Cynthia. They're in separate bedrooms and they couldn't even keep from sniping at each other for two hours when she went over for dinner despite being on their best behavior. 'Staying together for the children' is a textbook bad reason not to get a divorce. How are they supposed to feel secure in a household run by two people who are practically at war no matter how hard they try to avoid making them pick sides?"

"I suppose, but we do have things in common and we were roommates at MIT two years running until it started giving people the wrong idea. Or, well… I suppose this visit wasn't going so well."

"We were enemies and we were more civil than they were. Well, I'm an old man and Lia's in a nursing home. And it was your dates who got the wrong idea, Lia had been hanging out at gay bars for years and knew better. She got fed up when I was late to one date too many because you'd had to be dragged home from the computer lab before you'd spent enough time there working on the final project without sleeping to be considered legally insane. Sequential allnighters are a fact of life for those studying computer science. Most people can't graduate without mastering the fine art of power-napping, but you'd… I couldn't believe that you thought it was only Tuesday."

"Normally Anita from IT kicked me out when she came by to check everything over at ten on Wednesdays, but she was sick that week." That was how they'd met, actually.

"I pity Roll."

"I'm not as bad as I used to be." He'd had to get better at looking after himself, when he'd been keeping Albert away to keep him and Blues apart and wasn't reminded to go eat something before he became a literal zombie, the lab staff were too scared of him (treating a nice man like that) to take the risk of informing him he needed to shower…

"She wouldn't put up with it, unlike some idiots." Like himself.

"You're telling me. The two of them… I wanted to become a better person for them. And for you. I'm still… I'm not good at this."

"At least you admit it. And at least you're trying." Albert would give him that. "Thomas, despite the façade I am anything but sane. Every time I think of you I remember what happened. Every time I try to think of the good times I remember what they led to or I can't remember them at all. You were a fish out of water everywhere else but you are a genius, an artist, when it comes to design, and that's what I can't remember. I look at program code that should be the Mona Lisa and it's like one of those pictures that makes no sense until you cross your eyes right and it simply will not come into focus even though it used to be automatic. We all know that programming style is as individual as fingerprints or painting style. You can tell an amazing amount about how someone thinks looking at how they solve problems made manifest. Do they take shortcuts, do they annotate it carefully for the sake of others, do they… If what I wrote while I was off my medication made any sense to me I would bet money that it was insanity made manifest. I don't understand you anymore, and Blues was trying to help me with that, but… I'm not having the nightmares or flashbacks right now but I still remember. You're my best friend and a genius capable of creating the two of them but at the same time you're the person that did your best to kill him and destroyed my life."

"Albert, I…" He didn't have anything to say to that, and was rescued by Roll arriving with a tray of freshly-made dinner and the airplane pajamas.

"None of the day clothes will fit," she explained.

"Are you sure he won't mind?" By the end there, he had been almost flinching at the slightest touch. By the end there, Dr. Light hadn't even given the courtesy of a warning before turning him off to be worked on.

"Well,_ I_ mind that he's in armor." She quickly found the release catches but it was much harder to pry him away from Rock to put his arms through the sleeves.

The sounds as she did this could be summed up by, "?" but it was just puzzlement, not fear, and he didn't wake up.

"I feel like Snakeman," Roll murmured. "Only if I were doing this for entertainment value I'd have picked one of my summer dresses." Roll gave up tugging on the leg and just heaved. "And those don't have pants, so it would have been easier."

Albert laughed, and Thomas joined him.

"There we go." She let go of the leg and Blues' reflexes tugged it back up onto the couch and positioned it to avoid falling over. That accomplished, she gave him a look and he started in on his dinner. Albert next. "Let me know if you want anything else."

"We will." This was enough, but she wanted to make sure he knew that she would be happy to get him something. His stomach had growled once when he was about to go to bed since he hadn't had any lunch due to a sudden meeting. He'd been fine after dinner, but then he had started getting hungry again but hadn't wanted her to go to the trouble of making something, especially since they'd been playing Chutes and Ladders when the feeling started. Going to bed a little hungry hadn't been a big deal to him, but it was to her.

She nodded and sat down, lifting one of the two little cleanerbots that had trailed her into the room like ducklings into her lap to be checked over. Debugging, updating, writing new programs to deal with things that came up… the need to constantly do that was what had drastically limited the usefulness of robots. Then he'd had the bright idea that instead of trying to give every robot that did varying tasks (as opposed to assembly line) a limited AI that could only do so much and was very expensive to create it would be better to create a single high-level AI. That way, the less bright AIs could bring problems that they couldn't handle to it, simply transmitting the data and program code. A human trying to do that had to sit down and look at all of it on a screen trying to find the problem. Sometimes a single typo could crash a system. A 'robot master' could just attempt to run the program on a subsystem, use search functions… Blues could spot, fix, and update in a hundredth of a second test robot program error problems that could take the human tech support workers they'd looked at for comparison hours to find, let alone solve.

Blues hadn't liked those tests. Deliberately giving them wrong programs? One time one of the robots they'd wanted to use had been in his arms when they asked for it, and he'd been very reluctant to hand it over. Even though he'd been ordered to, despite the second law, he'd hesitated and looked like a kicked puppy. No, more like he wanted to try to protect the puppy from being kicked. He'd obeyed, but pled with his eyes for them to say they didn't mean it, to countermand the order. He'd bought the sunglasses home not long after that.

The sunglasses were on the table next to the couch, the scarf that had joined them hung over Albert's shoulders, and the eyes that had earned them were closed. He couldn't see Blues' face, but from that song he knew he was smiling in his sleep as the remains of what had been done to him were washed away. Hearing that song, seeing them all here together in peace if not quite in harmony made him feel that, despite the odds, everything would be alright.


End file.
